Age of Empires II does not work with Vista or Windows 7

Anonymous
2009-11-24T16:43:16+00:00

I have been unable to get Age of Empires II to work on my laptop - first with Vista and now with Windows 7.

It installs OK and when you go to launch it the small graphic launch box comes up, then the screen goes phsychedelic before reverting back to normal and nothing more happens.

It is a Compaq Presario with a Mobile Intel R45 chipset.

Any advice?

Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Gaming

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Anonymous
2009-12-02T14:15:24+00:00

RusFry,

    If you were not able to get the game to run in this same PC with Vista or Windows 7, then it appears that there is a hardware conflict with this game.  I see that this game was for older systems and only supports 800x600 graphics.  You may want to turn your desktop resolution down to 800x600 with 256 colors, then launch the game.  If this doesn't help then you may want to install DirectX 9 and see if that helps.

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  1. Anonymous
    2010-05-30T17:29:28+00:00

    hi Giles

            Iam well used to LAN gaming regarding age of empires on windows 7.

            I used to face this problem while playing with my friends having Win vista but when I re-checked the anti-virus and the windows firewall settings which obstructed playing on LAN. Now Iam playing on LAN without any problem(except for those graphics!!!).

            Hope you start playing

            Bye!!

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  2. Anonymous
    2010-04-28T04:40:56+00:00

    Yep, disabling Desktop Composition on the Compatibility Mode worked for Diablo 2 here, which had the same colors issue.

    I tried MS Virtual PC, Windows XP Mode, Sun Virtual Box, all failed because the VGA card they emulate are not good enough for the game. VMWare worked though. But it is not free.

    On Windows XP (not on a virtual machine, of course) it works nicely, although when I installed ATI Catalyst Driver it started to present the same color error. So I returned to the XP stock video driver.

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  3. Anonymous
    2010-03-08T15:16:17+00:00

    Install the RADTOOLS bink player to solve the cutscene-on-the-fritz issue.

    AoE2 seems to have quite alot of random issues in standard windows 7, here my mouse pointer continually flickers -IF I ALREADY MANAGE TO START THE GAME-

    However, all issues seemed to fade away if i use these compatibility options:

    -Run this program in compatibility mode for Windows 2000

    -Disable visual themes

    -Disable desktop composition

    and modify the shortcut so it runs in windowed mode (on the shortcut, add -w after the .exe"  part (including a space) )

    Works fine here now :)

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  4. Anonymous
    2010-03-08T10:10:27+00:00

    I tried that and it didn't work. In fact, just about everything I have tried doesn't work.

    Hi Penguinsrus2010,

    What have you tried already?

    What's your problem exactly? Can't you run a game, or maybe you got inappropriate colors? Do you get some error message?

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