Age of Empires 2 on Windows 7 has color issues

hi, (first excuse my poor english, I'm french) I wanted to play "AoE 2 : Age of King", and I had the same issue (16 colors mode under Win 7 x64 familial edition) I tried the batch method, but didn't work (...) So, while I'm coding (a little) with Auto-It, I made a very simple executable that works like the batch file : - start "empires2.exe" - close "explorer.exe" - restart "explorer.exe" when the game is over and it works fine ! (on my laptop) So, I added some small text information windows (not for me, but for others, for you ! ) and now you can download and try it there (it's a freeware, of course) : http://mithril94.free.fr/divers/aoe2-ws(x86).zip actually, it works only for AoE2-AK, not for Conquerors or any other version. I hope it'll help you to play this old but fantastic game ! edit : sorry, but where are my breaklines ?!!! need HTML tags here ?

how do you get Age of Empires 2 to work on windows 7  wan it is saying  make sure that my video Card  and the Driver are Compatible with Diect Draw

I have found a way to get past this issue. I am running Windows 7 Home Premium 32bit, and my video card is an ATI Radeon 4350 HD. These are more than adequate to run a simple game like AoEII, however, I ran into the same error message repeatedly.

I found this partial solution:

1. right click desktop, click "screen resolution". 2) click "advanced settings". 3) on Adapter tab, click "properties". 4) on Driver tab, click "Disable". 5) Restart computer, then open game!

The driver will disable as soon as you confirm, but you must restart your system in order for the game to recognize this fact. When I did it, it changed the resolution to 800x600 automatically. You will still have to deal separately with the color glitches discussed on this page, and for some reason when I'm in the single-player skirmish setup screen, I have to hurry with my settings before the whole system freezes and crashes.

If you don't have an ATI video card, you may have to go about things slightly different but the basic process is the same. When you're done with the game you can re-activate your video card from the control panel (hardware and sound>devices and printers>device manager>display adapters>right click on ATI Radeon, enable. You can also disable it from here.

Good luck if anyone is still reading this! I've noticed that with this and other older games on Windows 7, what works for one person very well may not work for another, and it's almost up to each person to come up with his/her own methodology. This game is totally worth it!

Other option is to find an old machine for cheap, run XP on it, and use your new machine only for new games. Lame, inconvenient, but effective.

-EP