Age of Empires II, DirectDraw please help!!

[Blerim]

I am having a Windows XP system with gaming configuration. Today I download and installed Age of Empires II without any error. But whenever I try to launch the game, it quits with the following error message:

“Could not initialize graphics system. Make sure that your video card and driver are compatible with DirectDraw.”

If I am not wrong it is related to DirectX, right? But when I checked my DX by running dcdiag, I found DirectDraw is enabled. Then what is causing the problem? Can anyone please tell me how can I get rid of the error and play the game?

Many thanks.

[Scott2580]

Though you have gaming configuration but did you checked if the system meets the minimum system requirements set for Age of Empires II? As you are a gamer, hope you know that every game has different requirements and should meet the minimum configuration. check for the same. Also i will suggest you to visit your Graphic Card manufacturer official website, download the most recent video drivers and install.

It should work fine now. By the way is this first time you install Age of Empires II on this PC or was it working fine earlier?

[Blerim]

Thank you very much for the help Scott. Yes i was playing this earlier on this PC but had to uninstall due to some reason. But now it is not working. And yes, my computer meets the recommended system requirements set for this game.

Also i tried updating my video drivers and it says it is up to date. Now what? Should i try re-installing the game?

[Bethlen]

I have the same problem. It worked perfectly well on my old graphics card but when I got a new one (ATI Radeon RX2600PRO) it stopped working, giving me that message. Using XP. Anyone got a solution?

[Mad Hatter]

Basically i had this problem for months and was getting some real heartache, and nearly killed my pc several times. however i have found a possible solution, but it does depend on one thing: does your pc have a graphics card or processor on the motherboard, other than the outboard one? find out, becease if it does then you go on to the device manager (through "system" on the classic style control panel) and find it in the "display" field. disable it. it will probably ask you to restart ur pc. say yes, or do it later. it should now work. to re enable your graphics card just go to the device manager and enable it.

[Heather B]

Hi

I've tried the solutions offered in this thread and even the one offered in another thread (Age of Empires problem solved) but no luck yet.

I'm trying to run age of empires 2 on a toshiba laptop with an
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 2600 graphics processor and Vista.

From the research I've done over the last couple of days (and bearing in mind I'm no computer expert - just trying to load this up for my son) it seems that ATI isn't allowed to sell catalyst graphics drivers with the mobility cards for laptops - see ATI entry in wikipaedia.

Has anyone managed to solve this problem on a new laptop yet?