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
    2010-01-03T09:47:42+00:00

    Ever since I upgraded to Windows 7 with my new computer, I have the same problem with my graphics.  The "grass" and water look horrible!

    Check is it going to work: Right click on the file which is launching a game > Properties > Compatibility tab > check Disable visual themes

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  2. Anonymous
    2010-01-14T03:40:34+00:00

    I'm having Win7 issues with AOE2 but with multiplayer LAN connectivity.  Here are the steps to recreate the issue:

    1. Create new AOE2 multiplayer game hosted on WinXP machine
    2. Open AOE2 on Win7 machine and view multiplayer games available
    3. As expected, the game I just created on WinXP machine shows up on Win7 machine under LAN TCP/IP connections
    4. Try to connect to hosted game from Win7 machine
    5. AOE2 says connecting to multiplayer game and it eventually times out after ~30-45 seconds and says "unable to join"

    I've disabled all security features on both machines, opened up ports on router, run AOE2 as administrator in WinXP compatibility mode, etc... and nothing seems to work.

    Any ideas?   has anyone else experienced this on Win7?  very strange.   I can play between WinXP machines just fine.

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  4. Anonymous
    2010-01-17T03:56:48+00:00

    Everyone,

    I found two alternatives that work.  The first one was listed on a Microsoft technet site.  The address is

    http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7itproappcompat/thread/a1763d12-11e2-498f-9b23-122792b14f74.

    What this fix does is tells you to fix the problem by doing the following steps:

    1. start AOE2
    2. press ctrl-alt-del and launch the task manager
    3. select the processes tab and click on explorer.exe
    4. click the end process button - Doing this will make your taskbar disappear and open folders
    5. alt-tab back to Age of Empires.  You will see that the grass and water look awesome.

    The problem is that the aero themes don't know how to handle the underlying map.

    The other way to fix the problem is more complicated.  Even though I have a genuine Intel quad-core processor, I don't have hardware virtualization so I couldn't use Microsoft's Virtual Windows.  But I downloaded and installed Sun's Virtual Box.  I installed Windows XP, service pack 2 as the OS and it works awesome.  My computer has 1 TB of disk space and 8 GB of ram.  I can have Virtual Box running, Windows Media Player with live TV and Internet Backgammon going.  Together they use about 45% of my processor and maybe 60% of my RAM so I think it's a good solution.

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