Problems with old games

[jakewat97]

So i decided to pull out age of empires 2, and have had some off and on problems with the graphics and game itself. For example, getting discoloring which almost looks like artifacting. Had this same problem with a few other old games to and was wondering is it that PCs these days are too powerful for these old games, because i'm sure that and that newer drivers were the main issue to these problems.

Also just now the game stopped responding to my keyboard and mouse but was not frozen, and i was unable to ctrl alt del or alt tab the game and was forced to shutdown. After the shutdown i got stuck on the mobo screen twice before i got back into my PC. very strange and kind of scary.

If these is any fixes, apart form downgrading drivers, i would greatly appreciate if someone would tell me.
Thanks Jake.

 

[cats_Paw]

First, you will need old DX files (the ones on your games forlder will be best). Then you need to set the compatibility modes.\
Then give those games admin rights.
If that still does not work, you will have to disable enchanced features in your Graphics cards software (catalyst or nvidia control panel).

Thats the most common way to solve the issues.
If they continue, google each game individually as there are many games that have been fixed with some special exe files or even tweaked to work with modern PCs.

 

[Motopsychojdn]

A lot of older games run in Dosbox quite well I believe
Moto

 

[Dieter Binst]

For dosgames, use DOSBOX...
For older windows games: discoloring and artifacting: games are not compatible with windows start bar...
So close explorer and run game... I use a .bat file.

create a file 'xxxxxx.bat' (replace xxxxx white watever you want)
edit the file
first line: taskkill /F /IM Explorer.exe
second line xxxxxx.exe (the file that starts the game)
3the line: explorer.exe

now you close explorer, start the game. When game closes, explorer is restarted...

For the freezing of controlers; you might want to try creating an "xxxxx.sdb" using windows compatibility toolkit (downloaded from microsoft website) This gives more compatibility options than provided by right clicking and properties setting compatibility optiion