Age of Mythology: Known video issues

This article describes known video-related issues that you may experience when you play Age of Mythology. The information covers both general video issues and issues that occur only with specific video hardware. This article also includes information about unsupported video adapters.

General Video Issues

If your video adapter drivers are not up to date, you may receive the following error message: If this issue occurs, first check the “Hardware-Specific Video Issues” section of this article to see if your video adapter is listed with specific steps to fix this issue. If your video adapter is not listed under "Hardware-Specific Video Issues", see the following Microsoft Knowledge base article:If your video adapter does not meet the minimum game requirements, you may receive the following error message:

Verify That Your Video Adapter Meets Requirements

To make sure that your video adapter meets the minimum requirements to play Age of Mythology, use the following procedure.

Part 1: Verify Video Adapter Memory

Use the DirectX Diagnostic Tool to determine how much video memory is installed on your video adapter. To do so, follow these steps:

1. Click Start, and then click Run.
2. In the Open box, type dxdiag, and then click OK.
3. Click the Display or Display 1 tab.
4. Under Device, note how much video memory is listed for Approx. Total Memory, and then click Exit.
5. If you have less than 16 megabytes (MB) of video memory installed on your video adapter, install additional video memory on your video adapter or install a video adapter that has more video memory.

Part 2: Install the Latest Driver for Your Video Adapter

Contact the manufacturer of your video adapter for information about how to obtain and install the latest version of the video driver for your video adapter. You may also visit the following Microsoft Windows Update Web site to see if applicable driver updates are available:For information about how to contact your hardware manufacturer, click the appropriate article number in the following list to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: Microsoft provides third-party contact information to help you find technical support. This contact information may change without notice. Microsoft does not guarantee the accuracy of this third-party contact information.
To identify the name and manufacturer of your video adapter, follow these steps:

1. Click Start, and then click Run.
2. In the Open box, type dxdiag, and then click OK.
3. Click the Display tab.
4. Under Device, look for Name and Manufacturer.
5. Click Exit.

For additional information about Age of Mythology minimum system requirements, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

Mouse or Color Problems When You Switch or Minimize Window During Game Play

When you press ALT+TAB to switch to a different program or ALT+ENTER to minimize the game window, you may experience mouse pointer problems or a change of the color depth in the game.

To resolve this issue, quit Age of Mythology, and then restart the program.

Screen Corruption

When you press ALT+TAB to switch to another program, you may see black areas on the game window or other screen corruption during game play.

To resolve this issue, download and install the most current drivers for your video adapter. To do so, contact the manufacturer, or visit the following Microsoft Windows Update Web site:

Mouse Pointer Disappears

When you press ALT+TAB to switch to another program or to change the in-game screen resolution, the mouse pointer disappears.

To resolve this issue, download and install the most current drivers for your video adapter. To do so, contact the manufacturer or visit the following Microsoft Windows Update Web site:

Monitor and Video Adapter Issues

When you try to use a high resolution setting, you see brief flashing. This behavior may occur when you use an old video adapter. This behavior does not affect game performance or stability.

To resolve this behavior, quit Age of Mythology, use the Age of Mythology Safe Video shortcut under Diagnostics to restart the game, and then switch to a lower resolution under Options.

Note Age of Mythology requires that graphics hardware acceleration be turned on. You may see the mouse cursor with the black screen in the background if 3D acceleration is turned off.

Non-Intel Video Hardware

If you have a motherboard that has a non-Intel chipset, upgrade to the most-current miniport drivers that are available from the motherboard manufacturer.

For additional information about how to troubleshoot display-related issues, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

Hardware-Specific Video Issues

S3 Pro Savage, S3 Pro Savage DDR, S3 Graphics Twister K

After the introductory movie, you may receive an error message that is similar to the following: To resolve this issue, make sure that DirectDraw Acceleration and Direct3D Acceleration are turned on on the Display tab in the Dxdiag dialog box. If the issue continues to occur, download and install the latest drivers for your S3 video adapter. To do this, follow these steps:

1. Visit the following S3graphics.com Web site:
   http://www.s3graphics.com/en/index.aspx (http://www.s3graphics.com/en/index.aspx)
2. When you are prompted, type archive for both User Name and Password, and then click OK.
3. Follow the instructions on the screen to download and install the drivers for your S3 video adapter.

If the issue continues to occur, replace your video adapter.

Note As of November 2002, there is no Windows XP driver for the S3 Graphics Super Savage adapter, so this adapter does not work with Windows XP.

Note There is an updated Windows XP display driver (6/12/2002) available from the Toshiba Web site (http://www.toshiba.com (http://www.toshiba.com) ) for S3 Graphics SuperSavage IXC display adapters. However, it has been reported that the game will not start either in safe video mode or normally with these drivers.

NVIDIA Geforce 2 MX/400

The pointer may not appear when the main menu appears, or it may flicker. To resolve this issue, visit the following NVIDIA Web site to download a current driver:

NVIDIA Geforce 2 or Diamond Viper V550 (Riva TNT Chipset)

The game may stop responding or you may receive the following error message:To resolve this issue, visit the following Nvidia Web site to download and install the latest video adapter drivers:If the issue continues to occur, visit the following Microsoft Web site to download and install the latest version of DirectX:

ATI Radeon 7000

Age of Mythology may stop responding a few seconds after you start a game. If this occurs, make sure that you have the latest drivers from your video adapter manufacturer or visit the Microsoft Windows Update Web site to look for applicable drivers:You can also visit the following ATI Web site to download drivers. To do so, visit the following ATI Web site:

ATI Radeon 9700 or Radeon VE

When you play Age of Mythology, the game will stop responding ("hang" or "freeze"). To resolve this issue, visit the following ATI Web site to download and install the latest drivers:

ATI Radeon M6

Issue 1

When you play Microsoft Age of Mythology, you may experience graphical corruption of your pointer, such as a black box around the pointer, a blinking pointer, jerky pointer movement, or the pointer may be missing. To resolve this issue, follow the steps in the following Knowledge Base article: If you have a Dell laptop, visit the following Dell Web site to update your video drivers:Issue 2

When you try to start or play Age of Mythology on Hewlett-Packard or Toshiba laptops with the ATI Radeon M6, the game may quit unexpectedly or stop responding, or the computer may shut down or restart. You may also receive the following error message: To resolve this issue, download and install the latest video drivers for your video adapter. See "Part 2: Install the Latest Driver for Your Video Adapter" in this article for instructions about how to obtain the latest drivers. If the latest drivers are installed on your computer but the issue continues to occur, wait for your manufacturer to release newer video adapter drivers that are compatible with Age of Mythology or return the game at the point of purchase.

ATI Mobility Radeon

When you start Age of Mythology on a portable computer that is running Windows XP, you may receive the following error message: This issue may occur if the video adapter drivers are outdated. To obtain the latest video adapter drivers, contact your computer manufacturer. If the latest drivers do not resolve the issue, add parameters to the Age of Mythology shortcut to workaround this issue.

To manually add parameters to the command line in the Age of Mythology shortcut, follow these steps:

1. Insert the game CD, but do not start the game.
2. Right-click the Start Age of Mythology shortcut on your desktop.
3. Click the Shortcut tab.
4. In the Target box, press END, press the SPACEBAR, and then type the following parameter:
   xres=1024 +noIntroCinematics bpp=16 +lowend +terrainHalfDensity +lowPoly -waterbump skipMipMapLevels=1 graphicDetail=2
   As an example, the following sample command line includes several parameters:
   "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\Age of Mythology\aom.exe" xres=1024 +noIntroCinematics bpp=16 +lowend +terrainHalfDensity +lowPoly -waterbump skipMipMapLevels=1 graphicDetail=2
   Note Parameters are not case-sensitive.
5. Click Apply or click OK.
6. Double-click the shortcut on your desktop to start Age of Mythology.

3dfx Voodoo 3

When you play Age of Mythology, some graphics may not appear or may be distorted. To resolve this issue, download and install the latest video adapter drivers from the following Web site:If the issue continues to occur after you install the latest video adapter drivers, replace your video adapter.