Unable to load games on vista

Hey, i'm running on Windows vista home premium with the following problem:

i can't load any games like diablo 2, starcraft, or warcraft. i've tried running as admin, running in safemode (this just brings me issues about directx which i think is normal), and reinstalling. nothing works. each time i try to load it, tt briefly changes the cursor to the 'loading' cursor (this lasts about 2 seconds) and then goes back to my normal cursor. Nothing happens. No matter how many times i restart, etc, i can't get this to work.

can someone tell me what i can do to fix this, and/or what info they need in order to help me and how to retrieve it? i am semi computer-literate. i understand some basics but not everything. thank you!

 

Make sure you have a page/swapfile set, I'd set it to 4092MB min and max.

Check the Event viewer > Applications logs for clues - log entries around the time that you start the games.