Is there any way to play older games on newer Windows?

Hey, I have a laptop with Windows 7 (x64), and I'm trying to play the old Age of Empires games on it. The Microsoft logos and intro cutscenes play fine, but when I get to the Home/Menu screen, the screen is all messed up. Think static, but stretched out into long horizontal lines of grey, black, and white. I hear the music playing, but can't see a damn thing. I can blindly click stuff for the most part, and it seems that the menu changes accordingly, but that static crap won't go away.

I've googled fixes for this multiple times, but it seems nobody has encountered the gray static screen. They're all able to make it to gameplay, with only coloration issues. I've tried everything from turning down the settings on the graphics card, to running the games in Win98 or XP compatibility. Nothing works.

Any input on how I can get these games to run the right way?
Thanks in advance!

 

Depending on your version of windows seven, you might have xp emulation, which allows you to use a virtual desktop with xp, pro and ultimate have that feature, pro requires you to provide the valid xp key, and ultimate has it built in.

 

I'm sorry, I forgot to mention that I tried downloading "XP Mode" from Microsoft, but I only have the Home Edition, so it's unavailable for me.

 

Theres a program called dosbox, that supports some of the older games, but im not really super familar with it, never having used it, might be worth you checking out tho.

 

Two things:

First, iIf you don't have DirectX9 installed already, remedy that. Backwards compatibility in Dx11 is not what it should be. Linky to download Dx9.

Second, uninstall the game and reinstall with the installer exe in compatibility mode with Windows XP, and As Administrator. Games developed before Vista's UAC was born often need a lot more extensive rights and permissions to install.

 

And for the record, even if your the only person on your pc and your an administrator, some games you still need to run as administrator in the menus.

Its a pain but some games worked for me after doing that.

 

tried uninstalling and reinstalling as admin, as well as installing DirectX 9. Nada.

Gonna try that dosbox program now.

EDIT: Doesn't look like Dosbox is going to help much. Seems to be for really really old games, like DOS games.

Any other input?

 

Where in Ultimate is this feature? I thought it was a program I had to download.