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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?
Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.
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.
Everyone,
I found two alternatives that work. The first one was listed on a Microsoft technet site. The address is
What this fix does is tells you to fix the problem by doing the following steps:
- start AOE2
- press ctrl-alt-del and launch the task manager
- select the processes tab and click on explorer.exe
- click the end process button - Doing this will make your taskbar disappear and open folders
- 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.
WOW! After hours trying to get AOE the Conquerors to work correctly (green grass and normal looking water) this simple five step trick worked. It is a little bit of a pain to go to task manager each time I start up the game but a small price to pay for a great old game! Thanks Ian Lamb for your post.
yh
i got window7 and it does not work
they need to support it
Update: I did a fresh install last night, and the gridlines are gone! All of the graphics in the drop-down menus are back. I didn't change anything in the system configuration, so I'm not sure why it's working now.
But . . . now I have green/red grass, purple/blue water, and funky-looking trees. The animated characters all look fine, though. It's just the background graphics.
I'm going to try the compatibility check tonight to see if that makes a difference.
I have also encountered a problem running AoE II and the expansion pack on Windows Vista, but it’s different than what others have discussed here. I picked up a newer system a few weeks ago, and have had no luck running the game. My system is a Dell Latitude D630 dual-core 2GB running Vista Business with an Nvidia Quadro NVS 135M video card.
The installation went through without a problem, but when the program loads, about half of the graphics aren’t there in the menus. The drop-down menus only have the first two or three choices, and everything else that would be there is blank. Once you start a game, the game screen colors are fine, but the entire screen is cross-hatched with black gridlines. I’ve tried reducing the resolution on the screen, but it hasn’t helped. Having the people walk around doesn't help either, as they just walk across the lines without the lines disappearing. I also tried the old "Marco" cheat code to reveal the screen, and while I can see everything on the map, it all still has the lines.
The game ran perfectly on my old laptop, a Dell Latitude C600 PIII 750 running XP-SP3, and it's still installed so my daughter can play it..
This is the only game that I have had problems with due to video issues. I am running Warcraft III, CivCity Rome, Unreal Gold, and other games without a single problem.
