Graphics issue with Age of Empires II: The Conquerors

Windows classic did not work for me - the colors are still crap. The post before that one did not work either. When I try to run compatibility for Win 98/ME the program will not load up. When I try for Win XP it loads, but colors are still crap.

Still, the only thing that has worked is disabling explorer.exe, except that after installing the C patch it does not recognize the CD. I also have Alcohol 120 installed with an image for the game mounted so it should recognize that, but it does not.

I was at a friends house last weekend and he has exactly the same issues, including the C patch problem.

I just saw this on another forum - maybe a similar solution was posted here earlier.

Change desktop theme to Windows Classic - not Windows 7 basic which I think I tried earlier. Bring up the screen resolution - minimize it. Start the game - it appears to work fine even with the C patch installed. WOOHOO

All this now means that the problem lies within Windows 7's GUI. I dont think that microsoft actually support the game anymore with patches etc so it looks like we are on our own boys with this one.

The going to Windows Classic and then minimising the resolution screen actually works for me on windows 7 ultimate 32 bit, so very pleased :)

i also have a problem, you see i am using laptop with 1366x768 resolution under ATI Radeon HD 3200 hardware..

The problem is that the game display with black bars on the left and right and it's not full screen. The colors can be fixed by killing the explorer.exe process although it's kinda making me hectic.

Does any one knows how to fix this?

Thanks

There are several solutions already posted. I don't want to act like I'm getting tired of these questions, but I'm really close to it! For the last time:
READ THE SOLUTIONS ABOVE.
If you don't want to stop explorer manual then make a simple .bat script in notepad. It's explained in one of my posts in this topic.
Take a look at this one and see if it works for you.
Good luck and enjoy the game!

I have the exact same problems as you with the C patch. I find disabling explorer fixed the color issues but I still get what I can only describe as shadows on the screen when I scroll. It's like different p[arts of the screen are repeating themselves.

I had the same issue. I found that making your theme to "windows classic" and opening the "screen resolution" window before playing a solution.

After entering the game,open the task manager. Go to process and end the explorer[dont end the entire process tree but just the explorer process]. Enjoy the game!

Lord Jon said:

Open the txt file and copy/past the following:

taskkill /F /IM Explorer.exe
age2_x1.exe
Start explorer.exe

Now save and close the txt file and rename the text file to "The Conquerors.bat", make sure that it doesn't end with '.txt' but with '.bat'. All without the quotes.

The batch file that you wrote didn't exactly work for me since after the explorer shutdown command the working directory gets changed to the system directory and then it can't find the game .exe, plus explorer starts up immediately again which results in the same graphic problem for me. I edited it to the following:

@Echo off
taskkill /F /IM Explorer.exe
cd /d %~dp0
Start /w age2_x1.exe
Start explorer.exe

Basicly it changes the working directory to the path the batch file was executed from and then waits for the game to close before it starts explorer back up again. Same story, save as batch file in the same directory as the game .exe and create a link to it. Run the link as admin as else it wont stop explorer.