Gaming Age of Empires, directdraw error?

[gifi4]

Hey guys, I had a sudden urge to play Age of Empires 1 and am stumped because I keep coming across the error "Could not initialize graphics system. Make sure that your video card and driver are compatible with DirectDraw."
The game itself starts up but hits a black screen and crashes to this error... I tried running in every compatibilty mode possible but to no avail. DirectXDiag is showing that I do have DirectDraw working...

Specs in sig. (GPU has temporarily been changed to GeForce 6600GT, IS compatible with AoE, played using that card on my old comp)
I did a bit of searching and came across stuff such as "The movie files need to be skipped" I haven't put the movie files on the installation. Any clues?

 

[purplesludge]

maybe in the config ini turn off movies?

 

[StarWolf3000]

Create (or modifiy) a shortcut that leads to the Empires.exe:

"C:\Programs\Microsoft Games\Age of Empires\Empires.exe" NoStartup

Replace "C:\Programs\Microsoft Games\Age of Empires" with the path on your installation. This will only disable the Startup Movies, not the Videos used during the campaigns. Maybe this is required to run on your "to modern" PC.

 

[gifi4]

maybe in the config ini turn off movies?

I don't have the movies, so the movies have no effect whatsoever.

 

[gifi4]

Create (or modifiy) a shortcut that leads to the Empires.exe:

"C:\Programs\Microsoft Games\Age of Empires\Empires.exe" NoStartup

Replace "C:\Programs\Microsoft Games\Age of Empires" with the path on your installation. This will only disable the Startup Movies, not the Videos used during the campaigns. Maybe this is required to run on your "to modern" PC.

Same problem...

 

[Originality]

For the life of me, I can't remember what I did to get it working on my laptop running Vista with a GeForce 8600M. Compatibility mode maybe?

 

[gifi4]

For the life of me, I can't remember what I did to get it working on my laptop running Vista with a GeForce 8600M. Compatibility mode maybe?

I tried running it in every compatibility mode available.

 

[gifi4]

Any clues?

I was really hoping to play it...

 

[triassic911]

Did you download it off steam? If so, On your library's tab, right click on the game and choose properties. Then click on the local files tab and click on verify integrity of game cache. I had an error with AoE Online as well (different error than yours) and doing this fixed it.

 

[Sly 3 4 me]

On a few of the games I've tried to run that were older, the problem was the difference in the newer revision of the DirectX, with DirectDraw. In your build case, most likely DirectX 11, it may not be functional with what the original Age of Empires is trying to use. It looks as though DirectX 8 is what the game natively runs on, have you tried forcing the game to run with this version? Or installing DirectX 8 or 9 (As redundant as it sounds, it works sometimes, as things are added to the newer revisions, but also removed).

To force the program to run with version 8, add this command to the shortcut target value of the desktop value, at the end of the directory: -dxlevel 80

E.G with the above directory: "C:\Programs\Microsoft Games\Age of Empires\Empires.exe" -dxlevel 80

And -dxlevel 90 for 9.0, etc.

 

[StarWolf3000]

Age of Empires (1 & 2) will run, if