Age of Empires III incompatible with Vista?

[tomster2300]

I've run into a wall here and it's beginning to become frustrating.

I installed AOE III today in my contiuance of replaying old favorites on my new computer, but I can't seem to make it work.

I originally installed it, patched it (1.11), then tried to run it. I got "Application error 005D" instead. I googled application error 005D and got nothing that amounted to even an explanation of what the error was. (Side note, how can they list errors without the explanation of said error?) I thought it might be the beta nvidia drivers I still had installed for the bioshock demo, so I uninstalled those, reinstalled the latest version, and again got said error.

So, I uninstalled the game, reinstalled it, left it unpatched, and tried again. Again, same error. I doubt patching it is going to do anything, though I guess I might as well try.

Nobody seems to be having a problem with playing this in Vista as I get virtually nothing when googling anything similar to "age of empires III vista problems".

Any ideas or solutions?

[tomster2300]

I found this: http://www.agecommunity.com/vistapatching.aspx but it doesn't seem to be any different from what I've been doing.

[pam123]

I don't see it on the list : http://www.vistaboard.org/gaming/29-...ows_vista.html

What happens when, off line, you kill the Vista security features and try patching it with a saved download?

[tomster2300]

I haven't tried killing the security features yet. Which ones exactly should I axe?

EDIT: I turned UAC off in the accounts panel, rebooted, and still got the same error.

[pam123]

The UAC is part of the security center so you've got the rest still running.
In particular there's a spyware blocker that could be what's causing your game woes.

[tomster2300]

How do I get to that?

I turned Windows Defender off and the game still wouldn't run. Is that what you were referring to?

[tomster2300]

Not sure what I did exactly, but after doing all of the above and installing AVG, I rebooted the computer and the game played just fine.

I'm still confused as to what the problem was though.

[shadowpr]

you have just got to love the way things work in windows sometimes....lol

[pam123]

Originally Posted by tomster2300 Not sure what I did exactly, but after doing all of the above and installing AVG, I rebooted the computer and the game played just fine. I'm still confused as to what the problem was though.

It's come up before but installing 3rd party security software disables Vista security apps that run in the background even when you think they're turned off. That may be what happened with you.