Problem playing games on Vista

I have just bought Age of Empires III and Rome Total War and am having problems with Vista. My PC has far greater than the min specs.

I keep getting the error message

"Age of Empires 3 has stopped working" then it fails to find a solution. The same happens with Rome. I have tried opeining it under XP, 98/ME etc and as an administrator. I have also downloaded patches and updates for the games and for vista. Having been on MS website I've tried all of their recommended solutions.

Can anyone help? I'm really losing patience and just want to play some strategy games!

 

did you try running them in compatilbilty mode??

 

Yeah, sorry that's what I meant when I said I'd run it under XP 98/ME, I wasn't very clear.

I've tried everything I could find by googling the problem etc, are there any other sugestions out there?

 

they just may not work in vista.
but after googling vista compatible games here is one of the sites i found http://http://forums.techarena.in/showthread.php?t=773045
and to let you know i too am running vista:-D
it seems my link doesn't work, but i'm letting you know there are sights that let you know what older games work with vista.

 

Have you tried the usual uninstall/reinstall route? Could just be that a file failed to install.

Also, 32 bit or 64 bit Vista? That makes a huge amount of difference. >.> Sadly.

 

Managed to reinstall vista completely and now it works fine. thanks all for your suggestions/help!