Vista - Problem with Age of Empires II

After install Age of Empires II, i try to play, but it not run and the
message is: "Could not initialize graphics system. Make sure that your video
card and driver are compatible with DirectDraw"
My Pc is new, i have a good ATI card and i try with the solutions proposed
in this link without any result:
http://support.microsoft.com/?scid=k...2902&x=22&y=12

Can anyone help me, please??!! :s

Its possible this is AOEII's way of reporting missing DirectX components.
Try going to www.microsoft.com/directx and clicking the download button.
This will install DirectX 9.0c on your system. It will NOT interfere with
the normal DirectX10 you got with Vista. What it will do is add some missing
pieces that MS didn't include with DirectX10.

Hope that helps!
Mark

Make sure you have the newest ATI drivers (http://ati.amd.com), and try
installing DX 9 (you can get it off the MS site, or it may be included on
the AoE2 CD).

--
Dustin Harper

i have the same problem an i also cant find any solution. i went to google
and i saw a forum post by someone how has saying he has having problems in
multiplayer mode, to have this problems he should be able to start the game
he also sead he has using vista home premium. if find any solution let me
know please.

were can i find direct x 9 for vista? when i go to your link it gives me the
direct X 10.
please help me again because i am a complete pc noob.

I have already instaled direct x 9 but the problem continues.

As soon as i start a game and the map appears, the scroll box automatically
starts climbing to the top of the screen. i switched out keyboards to see if
a button was stuck; didnt work. my mouse seems operational. are there any
software problems that could be responsible for this? if anybody can help,
plz email me at jalopyman@xxxxxx

Maybe microsoft should add this to its support page for that problem

Hi, i found a solution to that problem, and it works
after lots of trial and error and some thinking, the game
itself doesn't have any problem, its merely a problem of drivers
so, i thought why not try to disable the display adapter's driver
and use the windows default driver instead? And it works
Anywayz here's how to proceed,
Right click on your desktop>click on properties (Display properties will launch up)
Click on settings>Advanced
Click on the Adapter tab
Click on properties
in the General Tab, down below there is "Devie usage"
Click on that device usage list, and select"Do not use this device(disable)"
Click on ok to confirm (leave the display properties and all)
It'll ask you to rest, restart your machine
and voila you can play age of empires without that dumb direct draw problem.

Thanks to me

I encountered this problem also and have now created a much simpler solution.
there is a zip file attached to this post. it contains 2 x DLL's and 1 x EXE from the original Direct Draw implimentation under direct x 9.0c the file version has been slightly modified so that they will run under vista.
extract a copy of these 3 files to both your aoeII directory and your conquerers directory. the game will then work.
feel free to spread these to other forums etc. but give me some credit, i spent 9 hours working out how to do this.

this solution seems to work for a lot of older games under Vista. the latest runtimes for Direct X do not include Direct Draw support, this doesnt mean your video card doesnt support it, and can be rectified with this simple 2 step process.

Age2_X1.zip

hello unit,

I have the same problem, I tried to solve it with your suggestion but it doesn't work for me, please help me.

I extracted the files of the zip to my desktop after that i copied them to my aoeii directory but it doesn't work, I'm following the steps correctly?

Please answer me.

Gusanto