I suppose the deployment issue is that I don't know how to do it. I have written a demo that I'd like to submit as part of a portfolio. The demo will consist of a bunch of textures and sounds, the executable, my engine dll (the demo is a game built on top of the engine), as well as the fmod dll. I suppose that I'll also need the C/C++ runtimes (dlls), and perhaps the DX runtimes, although I'm fairly sure that when I submit this to a game/graphics company, it will be run on a computer that has up-to-date DX libraries. These don't have to be bundled up nicely. They can all be put in the same directory, I just need it to work. I've searched a bit, but a lot of the things I've found involve writing complicated config files, or using the Professional version of VC++ 2005, which is a little expensive for me at the moment. What are my options?

I actually covered the former in some of the GDC coverage, which you can find here. Its like the second footnote.

As far as teh DirectX runtime goes, you can always redistribute the web installer, which will install only what they actually need. (Don't forget that you have to include their EULAs...)