Im also running into some problems with shaders, been a while since I was here and it seems I have forgotton most of what I knew, and that wasnt much I can tell you...
I have been through the tutorials on the wiki but I noticed this issue with Dx8 and Dx9 problems? More confusion for us simpletons...
Personally I need a normalmap shader that wil run on my Rad9800pro. I am working on the process for creating acurate tangent normal maps in 3D max and getting it into GS and I can tell you I am not having much luck... lots of black stuff....when it works.
While I appreciate the comments made by those who know here, tired of answering noob questions about how to use a shader.... There is clearly still grey areas and it's very hard to get up and running...
However in defence, I noticed that I was only displaying messages no older than a month and so was missing a lot of earlier tutorials and advice. I think a sticky post here with 'How to get up and running with shaders' would be a great idea, and maybe stop people like me asking stupid questions over and over again...
Edit:
This is the thread where I am looking at normal mapping techniques,
Generating Normals with Max, just incase you feel like helping me out Steempipe