Age of Empires 1 and 2 freezes

I recently installed Age of Empires 1 and 2 onto my computer, and they work fine until I enter the game. I play for only a few minutes, and the game freezes and I cannot enter the task manager or exit out of the game. It forces me to restart my computer.

What is the problem here and how can I fix it?

Anyone have an answer here?

right mouse click my computer, properties, advanced, data execution protection. add an exception for the .exe

see if that helps

No, it still froze mid-game.

You use cd/dvd or virtual/emulation?
1 Try to uninstall the game and install/play just one at the time.(sometimes same games (expantion) conflict each other)
2 Update graphic card driver.
3 Update bios

Uh...Age of Empires 1 was made for Windows 95...no wonder it won't work with Vista.

Also, if you're computer exceeds the performance of the game by more than twice, a lot of times that will cause the game to screw up.

Try using compatibility mode.

Hey all, I'm new here and only came here because my AOE 2 kept freezing as well, and it seemed hopeless to fix it because no one had a fix. Well i figured it out and it's quite ridiculous to be frank, here goes...

Get a copy of your video drivers first for your video card.

Go to Start and right click on "My Computer" and click on properties. Then the window pops up with all its tabs with the "hardware," tab being one of them; click on it. Then click on the "Device Manager" button and a new window will popup showing a list of your hardware devices under their categories. We need to find the "display adapters" category. Click on that and then it expands to show what device (or sometimes software renderer) you are using. Click on your video device (video card) and right click it. When you right click it, click on uninstall, follow the prompts to uninstall it and then reboot the computer. Now this part sounds a little crazy but just follow what i say : When the computer finishes rebooting, click on age of empires and play it! It will work perfectly and you can play it at any resolution the game lets you (one of the three resolutions lol). So at this point you're playing the game without any technical videocard drivers. And yes their is a difference, try opening up a folder and scrolling or scrolling on a webpage and you'll know your drivers were unisntalled because the scrolling will be very choppy. Another thing you could try back in the device manager is disabling the device driver instead of uninstalling it, it gives you both options, that could also work but i've never tried it. But anyways, it would be nice to have another copy of your video drivers so when you decide to play a 3d game that you would need the drivers for, that you could easily install them again.

I gotta say, i'm gald to be playing AOE2 after a year of getting my new laptop and not being able too. And the funny thing is, not all vista people have the problem, so it became really puzzling to attempt to fix but then i did this and it was so simple but a little annoying but well worth it for our AOE2 lans . Another thing, it froze for me in both vista AND xp! so don't think downgrading will well, i'm dual booting and it did nothing for me changing back to xp, but xp was able to run more older games than vista could so xp might be worth it .

no no no do not unistall your drivers there is no need!

simply right click on the game icon on your desktop, click properties, then the compatibility tab, and run the program in compatibility mode for Windows XP (Service Pack 2) etc. or even Windows 2000 and so on.

i had the same problem but i did this and everything works fine! if you still experience problems sometimes checking the box "Run this box as an administrator" helps.

thats right click on icon > properties > compatibility > run the program in compatibility mode for: > Windows XP (Service Pack 2).

Usually game freezes like that is due to faulty RAM as well. I bought some RAM and it did that. Swapped it for some Kingstons, problems all solved.

deltatux