thanks to both of you, but:
concerning dx9: when I want networking to work in wine 1.0.1 from older applications/games, I need to install DX9 completely (already did that), using the replacements winetricks installs doesn't work for what I need. No bugs occur that I found, and the wine docu says that I can replace everything except the wine kernel itself --- so I did ;-)
concerning access: MS products are buggy by definition, but I just need it to work well enough that it runs without shredding (much) more often than on a genuine Windows installation. I'll try out your hints; and the upgrade to 1.1.33 s iin progress.
concerning Wine under !{KDE,GNOME}:
*has* to be a wine bug or at least a dependency on certain running stubs or processes, because if it wasn't, it would run under FVWM as it does under KDE/GNOME. Period. No further discussion about this. If anyone knows how to fix this issue, please let me know.
