Age of Empires Forums

Hi everyone,

I've got some problems with installing and playing AoE on my HP laptop with windows 7. It has a AMD Mobility Radeon HD 6700  graphics card, capable of running battlefield 3 in high settings, and 8 Gb of physical memory. Here's the problem:

I first installed the game using disks. Installation went on fine, but then, when everything was installed (all 3 disks inserted and installed), I couldn't actually launch the game. I would double click the icon to launch it, but nothing happened. My windows aero theme was switched to basic, and a loading circle around my mouse cursor showed up, but then.. well, nothing. I followed the age3.exe process using windows task manager, and at first it would use around 4000 K of memory, but then after a minute drop to 230ish K. 
So I started looking around forums, including this one, for solutions. Here's a list of things I tried:

-run as administrator
-run in compatibility mode for windows xp service pack 3/ windows vista/ windows 7
-restart computer
-reinstall (numerous times)
-run age3.exe directly

Then when nothing worked, I decided to try it with a different copy of age of empires (which I downloaded of *** to be honest). Here is a list of the things I did:

-uninstalled old version using revo uninstaller
-deleted registry related files
-deleted game folder
-deleted C:// ... /Program files(x86)/microsoft games/age of empires 3 
-defragmented disk
-cleaned up everything using ccleaner
-mounted the image files of AoEIII using daemon tools 
-run mounted image
PROBLEM: age of empires screen comes up with options "play" or "uninstall", yet every trace of AoE has been deleted of my computer, so I:
-click uninstall option: windows setup comes up, then quits again. Nothing happens.
-restarted computer
-remounted image 
-age of empires screen comes up, this time with option "install". 

PROBLEM: So I click the install button, and the windows setup screen comes up. But then, again (as with the uninstall problem), when the setup reaches "preparing to install..", the green bar goes to about 3/4th the length, and then the setup window simply closes. No errors, no pop ups, nothing.  

-I try to run setup directly from disk, and the same problem occurs. 
-I ran the setup as an administrator and in compatibility mode, and still no change of situation.
-I restarted my laptop, cleaned everything up (with revo uninstaller, regedit, ccleaner)
Nothing seems to help.
Yet, when I try to install the asian dynasties, the whole installation process is fine (I can't play it of course since you need the main game installed) , but I can't seem to install the age of empires III main game. 

 Any help would be greatly appreciated,  

Greetings,

DutchJSCOOP 

Hey Dutch,

When I read the first sentence.. windows 7... hp... Yeah man those two are at the very bottom of my list that I would use. I can already guess the issue is with windows 7.

Now if you are comfortable with remote support please let me know so I can take a look. If you are not comfortable which I totally understand;

What you can do is download procmon and procexp by sysinternals. Procexp is an advanced taskmanager that shows many additional details about running processes. This includes dlls loaded, threads, command line, open ports, image, much more.

Procmon is a file and registry activity monitoring tool. When you launch it, it starts telling you the current file actions being performed on your computer. With windows 7 this is alot even when your computer should be idle, so what you need to do is setup a filter that only monitors  age3.exe and the install file what ever it's called.

With this tool you can monitor what file actions are being done and check to see if there were any access denied's or file/registry write failures during setup or startup of age of empires.

 If it runs without showing a window, it must be missing some specific additional dlls or does not have full administrive access, in other words it doesn't have full resources to run.

-Alex

Metis: "Remember that if you are running under Windows 7 that you you must run the game both under XP, service pack 3 compatibility mode and as an administrator."

Did you try running it this way?

-Alex

age of empires screen comes up with options "play" or "uninstall", yet every trace of AOE has been deleted of my computer

Actually, it hasn't and the reason is probably because of the User Account Control and/or your security applications and settings.

Follow the steps in the Install/Reinstall procedures.

Specifically,

Make sure that you are on an account with full admin privileges that has taken ownership of the Program Files and Documents folders, then look for and delete any remnants of AOE 3 in

• C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Games and
• C:\Users\<your login>\Documents\My Games.

Use Temp File Cleaner to clear up your temporary file folder (run it as an admin).

Run the Microsoft FixIt to help you finish the uninstall.

Reboot your computer.

As it appears that you may have downloaded from a torrent, run the online version of Eset's anti-malware scanner. If the scanner finds malware, follow the instructions here.    

Reinstall the game.

AoE III works fine on my windows 7 machine and the windows 7 compatibility says it should

you do not need to us any emulators. It should just run from 7.

I have 7 Ultimate with a 1.8ghz Raedon 6450 graphics 3 gb ram 160hd with a socket a motherboard

tbaker13:

AOE III works fine on my windows 7 machine... you do not need to us any emulators. It should just run from 7.

On some Windows 7 systems systems, especially single-user 32-bit systems, AOE III installs and runs just fine because the system's settings allow it to install properly and automatically configure the executables to run with the proper privileges and compatibility. However, not all systems will do this; the procedures are for those who are having trouble installing the game.

Hi, and thanks for the fast replies! 

@alex, what exactly do you mean with remote support? I will give those programs a try in a minute. And yes, I did run the files both in compatibility mode and administrator-mode (is that a mode?? :P)

@Metis, it's funny you should reply, because I actually followed your guide step by step, but I skipped the whole permission-part because there's only one account on my computer, and that's (obviously) my account. So I didn't think the problem would lie there... so am I wrong?
btw: fix it didn't list age of empires, I tried that one already..

@tbaker13, a friend of mine has a self-assembled desktop with windows 7 64bit aswell, and he didn't have any problems whatsoever. 

Oke, so I've downloaded the processmonitor, and it showed me this: 

-a couple of times it gives a "FILE LOCKED WITH ONLY READERS" result
-it also gives a couple of "NO SUCH FILE" result during the operation QueryDirectory and the file wing.dll or wing32.dll
after that it exits thread and after bunch of succesfull "QueryNameInformationFile" operation the process exits. 

a couple of other results I see:

"name not found", "sharing violation", "end of file" and "no more files".

What should I pay attention to? 

Try installing the game with a different Admin account.

1. Go to Start and right-click Computer then select Manage
2. Double-click Local Users and Groups
3. Right-click Users and select New User
4. Enter a new user name
5. Un-check the box for User Must Change Password At Next Log-on
6. Click Create then click Close
7. Double-click Users 
8. Right-click the new user account name and select Properties
9. Go to the Member Of tab and click Add
10. Type "Administrators" (without the quotes) and click OK
11. Click OK again to exit Computer Management.
12. Now, go to Start, hover over the right-triangle and select Log off
13. Move the mouse to wake the computer and then log onto the new Admin account.
14. Install the game (remember to check the Install for all users box when asked)

I put a box around the Local Users and Groups.

yes precisely, but the "local users and groups" is missing.

 I'm trying to post a picture of it, but it isn't working..

 oh well, just a link then: http://s1053.photobucket.com/albums/s474/dutchJSCOOP/?action=view&current=Capture1.png