Age of Empires 2: AoC expansion

[Anarchitect]

Hi guys,

I installed W7 and so far it's been working fine. However, I ran into a problem. When I try to play my AoE 2: the Conquerors expansion, everything works. When I start a game, some of the graphics (trees, grass and water) seem highly corrupted (mostly they're much to 'red'). When I put the resolution on 800x600, it works. When I try 1024x768, I get the weird corruption.
I tried most of the compatibility modes (XP, W2000, W98, all with different combinations of DPI/Visual Themes/256 colors etcetera). Does anybody have an idea?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Mark]

Have you tried updating your display drivers?

 

[Anarchitect]

I have now, but to no avail. Any other ideas?

 

[Mark]

Have you updated your Direct X with latest from Microsoft, which is November I believe.

 

[Anarchitect]

Yup, I got DirectX off the website, but it doesn't seem to help... Most of the graphics are perfectly okay, it's just a few sprites. However, when the mouse turns into the turning circle (you know, when it's processing), I can see that it's not really 'blending in', there's a bit of black around the circle. I think it's probably the same problem. The parts that look bad look like they're old .gif images.

 

[Mark]

What are your system specs?

 

[Anarchitect]

I'm running an Acer Aspire 5520 Laptop, with an AMD 64 X2 TL-58 1,9GHz, GeForce 8600M GS 512MB, 3 gigs of ram. I believe those are the important parts, but I might've forgotten some.
Cheers!

 

[Mark]

Have you installed all your chipset drivers for your motherboard, also have you tried playing the game in compatibility mode for XP?

 

[Anarchitect]

Yes, I have.

 

[64fanatic]

Make sure you're using the windows update drivers for nvidia cards, the later ones for vista though they may say they have windows 7 drivers break a lot of games.

Anyhow the corrupted colors, just alt-tab and then maximize again, worked for me back in the windows 98 days when that happened to me

 

[Anarchitect]

Okay, I think I installed the nvidia drivers off the Acer website first, then found out about the automatic update drivers. I then installed those, could that've led to a conflict? If so, how do you think I should solve it? I tried doing a system recovery, but the windows update installed drivers remained existent.

Alt tabbing didn't work either
Thanks for helping me out though!

 

[Hippo697869]

I have the same problem, and i can´t resolve it. I´m usin´radeon 2600 Pci-e.
that alt+tab worked in vista, but not under w7.

 

[jbosa1]

I'm running that game in Windows Vista on my other computer...works fine. According to Microsoft anything that runs in Vista should be running in Win 7 too...at least thats is what they say...the reality may of course be different but hope not...

 

[Hippo697869]

ok, maybe, the problem is the beta version. it could be, that the normal release with the drivers will fix that problem. i have this corruption in vista too, but after alt+tab the graphics are excellent - but nit in w7. we´ll see after releasing.
there is one thing i know: w7 beta is still better than vista pro premium ultimate etc.

 

[geekarlier]

Same problem ... the colors are just ****y as hell...
I hope Microsoft will fix this in the final version, because this game is eternal !

 

[Raddest]

Ok Anarchitect you're in luck.

I've had the exact same problem, and it has been very annoying.

I've actually fixed it. Rather than go through detailed instructions, word for word, these images should do you justice.

From the first pic, right click on your desktop and click 'screen resolution' then 'Advanced Settings'.

Click the GeForce tab then the 'Start NVIDIA Control Panel' button

Next, make sure after you follow instructions in red in the pic, make sure you mimic all those settings. In the next pic I've scrolled down so you can see the rest of the settings.

These next two pictures I've taken of the 'Global Settings' screen, so you can mimic those settings as well.

Make sure you click apply in the bottom right hand corner and tell me how it goes.

This game is timeless and will go on for a long time.

Let me know if this works for you.

 

[Raddest]

Also, I've just realized that this won't fix it UNLESS you keep the screen resolution window open (right click desktop > Screen Resolution).

Wierd.

 

[Anarchitect]

Thank you so much! It works like a charm!
When I had the resolution window open, I started the game. It worked fine, and after about 10 seconds it flashed back to the crappy stuff.
However, thanks to Raddest's methods, everything is working a-okay. I haven't played a whole game yet, but that should be alright. Thank you so much! Especially for taking the time to take screens etc., very much appreciated. If I can help you...

Billy Mays approves of your methods!

 

[Anarchitect]

So I played AoC the other day, finally, and what'll you know? After approx 5 minutes the screen goes weird again. If I go back to windows and then back to the game again, it fixes itself, and after five minutes it comes back again. Any ideas?

 

[Raddest]

Nope, but my fix isn't working properly now anymore either.

Thinking of formatting back to XP just because of this game hah.