Getting Age of Empires II The Conquerors to work on our Alienware hardware

***Update: With the settings below I've experienced inconsistent game launches with crashing every so often. I'm looking into the problem.***

Many of you have been wanting to play the classic RTS Age of Empires II The Conquerors, but instead have been met with screwed up colors or flat out crashes before the game even loads. Many speculate, to which I agree, that the game is simply too old to function properly without some tweaking in Windows 7.

I've worked a long time for this solution and hopefully it'll work for some of you hoping to play this classic again on your AW machines.

I've included all necessary parts that you will need to download for this to work.

Ok, let's get to it. You'll need the following:

1. AOEII Age of Kings
2. AOEII The Conquerors
3. Age of Kings 2.0a Patch
4. The Conquerors 1.0c Patch
5. The Conquerors batch file I've created that kills explorer and fixes the screwed up colors. Batch
6. Patience to test if my method fails.

Installation:
1. Install AOEII Age of kings, the bare minimum without cinematics (install into it's own folder, mine being C:\Age Of Empires II). Be sure not to create a desktop icon since you won't need it anyway.
2. Install patch 2.0a
3. Do not run the game at all, it probably won't work
4. Install AOEII The Conquerors, bare minimum again, into your Age of Kings folder. Again, don't create a desktop icon.
5. Install patch 1.0c
6. Find your batch file you downloaded and place it into the folder you installed The conquerors (mine being C:\Age Of Empires II\age2_x1) Leave the batch alone for now.
7. Find your The Conquerors launch icon (age2_x1.exe, if it's not named that rename it to age2_x1), right click and properties.
8. Under compatibility, run the program in compatibility mode for Windows XP (service pack 3)
9. Under settings, check the box for Run in 256 colors & Disable visual themes
10. Finally, check the box for Run as Administrator. Click apply and ok.
11. Find your batch file you placed into the Conquerors folder and double click the batch file. It should prompt you to run as admin and then flicker a bunch.
12. Hopefully you're in the game menu now and can create a profile etc.
13. You can now create a shortcut of the batch file to your desktop for easy access. You will also never need to run off the game's .exe but instead the batch file.

Note: I have not extensively tested these settings but it appears that at settings above (took me a long time to find the right combo), I did not run into freezing, crashing, or any other problems thus far. Will play some games soon for more confirmation. These settings were done on my M11x hardware but have also worked in the past on my netbook.

If the following method does not work for you and you still experience freezing and crashes then feel free to play with the compatibility settings and post your results.

Thanks for reading and until next time...


***Update: With the settings below I've experienced inconsistent game launches with crashing every so often. I'm looking into the problem.***

 

Didn't work for me, Thanks anyway.

 

yeah unfortunately my M11x is going back for a refund so won't be working on that platform anymore. When I get my M17x-r2 I will continue my work with this. Please be patient and I WILL find a solution or beg for forgiveness...

 

Hey villosa, has there been any progress? I'm keen on playing but have very little experience with getting programs to work in such a manner.

 

The Conqueror's doesn't work on my M11x, I got AoE II running though through a batch file method.

I think it's something to do with AWs specifically that The Conqueror's wont work on.

The batch file method works fine on my G73 for it.

 

Yeah, most people I ask for help tell me there can't be anything specific to Alienware and won't listen when I say that they're wrong.

I have an M17x-R2 and want to play Conquerors, hah. Is there actually no solution? Has anyone pinpointed where on the computer the problem is?