You didn't install from Windows Update, did you? You should go run the updater from MS's official DirectX page.
I havn't had a single problem with it, loads extremly fast, in game in under a min and a half. (To those that think thats long, It sometimes took up to 10 minutes to load BF2)

I'm running x64, with Athlon 64 3 Ghz OC>4 Ghz, ATI xGTO1800, and 1 gb of sli ram. Same as before with BF2, so for me, Performance wize, a great improvement.

My brother's rig gave him lots of problems when he first tried BF2, but that with due to his OC's, too high.
By "takes 15 minutes to start a game" I meant that after loading you still have to fumble through an unnecessarily obtuse menu system. I have an Athlon64 2.5 GHz, 2Gb RAM and a GeForce7800GT, not to mention a 10k SCSI drive. Speed isn't the issue here.