Games won't play

Before my harddrive crash the games I had on this machine ran fine. So it must be something I am missing or have set different...so far the problem is with two games. Age of Empires III and the Sims Deluxe Edition. The program will start the first splash screen but when going into the game..nothing... it just does nothing..on Empire you get a black screen with music and an arrow you move, but no picture or anything. Have to Crl,alt,dlte to get out of it. ON sims there is no screen at all.. okay I am running XP pro with SP2 all updates, Avast, zone alarm pro, I use a registry repair to keep that clean..there is no spyware or malware present, Avast is upto date, I have been trying for days to figure this out...I have every Codec I can think of downloaded and updated. Gspot tells me on both of them : 0X80040265: Cannot play back file. The format is not supported. I have Nero Ultra installed .. I have media player , I have DVD players, what else do I need...the active X is upto date, where am I off?:cry

 

try posting in the games forum you might get more help in there

 

thanxs! just did