Age of Empires II and Windows 7 x64

[The_Lucas]

As my signature states, I love playing AOE II: TC. But now I have added an addition to my large software collection: Windows 7 Ultimate x64. My new favorite OS, it has made many improvements over XP. But back to the question:

When I run AOE II on Win7, the landscape is in weird colors. The sea is purple, the grass and dirt have a grid and look horrible, and it's driving me insane that I can't ditch XP yet and free up a 30 GB partition. I have run the compatibility wizard, tried all the different combinations of compatibility options, disabled Aero and made 7 look like 2000, and closed all my background programs. I think it's a graphics conflict.

Here are my specs:
AMD Athlon 64 3500+ CPU at 2.4 GHz (single core, no HAV)
nVidia 7300GT graphics card with 256 MB VRAM.
I have run AOE II in a virtual machine running XP, and it didn't have issues except it was slow. On my XP installation, the problem would occur when I had a program called Simple Sticky Notes running, mainly because I set the notes to transparent. However, this program isn't running when I run AOE II on 7.

I have gotten XP Mode for 7, however I think it's not going to work right until I have a CPU with HAV. It seems to use Remote Desktop to view the VM, which is stupid because RD can't take advantage of Direct X. So I've been using a great free program called VirtualBox by Sun.

Notes on posting:
1. I can't get a new computer, graphics card, CPU or pricey stuff like that. I really don't want to spend anything at all.
2. I want to be able to play the game on 7.
3. Please stay to the question.

 

[GibsonSGKing]

I ran into this exact problem last night at a lan party, except my game locked up at the "Loading" screen before the game starts, and I had to restart to close it. If anyone has a fix I would love to try it.

 

[The_Lucas]

This problem happens every time you start the game. Anybody else played AOE II on 7?

 

[cboucher]

This problem happens every time you start the game. Anybody else played AOE II on 7?

I've played it on my netbook running 7, but I figured the weird colors were because the resolution of the netbook isn't supported by the game. I just lived with it, although I rarely play games on my netbook anyways.

 

[The_Lucas]

So, if more people with 7 are having issues with it, it may be a 7 problem.
Keep posting!

 

[GibsonSGKing]

So, if more people with 7 are having issues with it, it may be a 7 problem.
Keep posting!

But it worked on my friends computer that had the same OS, but with a Phenom X3 and GTX260

 

[Neodude1123201]

Right click on AOE,Go into compatibillity and Tick 'disable visual themes' and 'disable desktop composition' and give that a whirl.

 

[The_Lucas]

As I said, I tried all the compatibility combinations. Just a whim, but which of you guys ran AOE II on 7 x64?

 

[Neodude1123201]

Me. This works.

If that doesnt work,run the game and then alt-tab out,open the task manager and then kill explorer.exe and then alt-tab back into the game.

 

[The_Lucas]

Now there's something new! I used to do that when I had a 500 MHz machine with 64 MB RAM. I'll try it.

Also, I will try a command-line option to modify the shortcut that will make AOE use system memory instead of graphics memory