Problem running AOE III

[jimhammond]

I am having a problem running Age of Empires III on my system and I think it is a video card or monitor problem.

My system is AMD 64 Athlon 3500+ on a ASUS A8N-E mb Rev. 2.00 (bios 1008.xx), 1gig (2x 512) Kingston DDR, Gigabyte GV-NX66t128D nVidia 6600GT PCI Express card. I loaded the latest drivers for the vid. card. OS is Win XP Home w/ SP2. The monitor is an old one I had laying around, until the new one gets here. It is a 15" crt (ctr?) from HP. I think it is running at below 70 refresh rate and the resolution is 800 something x 600 something (I can't check it right now).

When I try to run AOE III the loading screenshot will show, then the screen with the options including "start game" and then the screen will go blank and a dialog box appears which says "Self diagnostic. PC video display setting correct?". After a moment the screen goes blank again and then nothing, just a blank screen. If I hit Crl+Alt+Del it shows "Age of Empires 3" running, sometimes it shows "Age of Empires 3" and "Age of Empires III" running. If I end task, the Win desktop comes back.

I know the monitor is garbage but I was able to play AOE III using the monitor on an older system. It just moved real SLOW. I expected to get something with the new system and this monitor at the lower end settings.

I just want to make sure that there isn't some known compatability problem with AOE III and the Gig. video card or the ASUS mb. Anyone have any thoughts about this?

Thanks for your help. Jim

 

[Alpha4]

First thing I suggest you try is to override your monitor's maximum refresh rate to what you think the game is demanding (70-85 hz), turn your monitor off and try to launch the game. (If necessary have a shortcut highlighted and ready to launch from your desktop) Then listen for any indications that the game has launched, such as the music for the opening cutscene. If it launches successfully then you'll need to find a way to change AOE III's default resolution &/or refresh rate. I can't help too much in that department, sorry.

If that fails you can always try to roll back your video drivers.