Direct Input Problems

Hello, I am currently working my way through learning Direct X and have been working on DirectInput however I cannot get any of my programs that use it to work for some reason. I am using the Direct X 9.0b SDK but the following line of code keeps giving me the same three errors. The problem is at the very beginning of my code so I will provide it all up to the problem point #include <windows.h> #include <stdio.h> #include <dinput.h> #include "resource.h" // Application variables //////////////////////// HWND g_hWnd; // Window handle char g_szClass[] = "MouseDemo"; // Class name This here is the line that is giving the errors: IDirectInput8 *g_pDI; // DirectInput component And here are the errors: C2143: syntax error : missing '';'' before ''*'' C2501:''IDirectInput8'' : missing storage-class or type specifiers C2501: ''g_pDI'' : missing storage-class or type specifiers I get these errors in every program I have tried that uses DirectInput I even tried the samples that are provided with DirectX itself but they won''t compile either. I am including dinput.h and linking dinput8.lib and dxgiud.lib So I have no clue why this won''t work and help would be greatly appreciated Thanks