Age of Mythology start up problems

[Fergus Concannon]

When I start up AOM on my laptop, it runs through opening
video scenes and then a message appears saying that it
failed to initialize and returns to windows. How do I
solve this problem?

 

[Jimmy S.]

Hi Fergus,

The Initialization failed error may occur if one or more of the following conditions are true:

a.. Your video card does not meet the minimum system requirements of Age of Mythology.
b.. Your video card is incompatible with Age of Mythology.
c.. Your version of DirectX is corrupted or out of date.
d.. You have multiple video adapters installed on your computer.
e.. The Screen Size (resolution) setting is too high for your video adapter.

To resolve this issue, use the methods in this article, in the same order in which they're presented:
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=811553

--
Cheers, Windows XP MVP Shell / User
Jimmy S. http://mvp.support.microsoft.com

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_________________________________________________________

| When I start up AOM on my laptop, it runs through opening
| video scenes and then a message appears saying that it
| failed to initialize and returns to windows. How do I
| solve this problem?

 

[dixxie]

pardon my bump...

Going to go ahead and bump this ancient thread with the answer, seeing as this is one of the first results on google.

The issue stems from AoM trying to force the display adapter into a resolution that it does not support, at which point AoM throws an error and displays the "failed to initialize" message.

To fix the issue, edit the shortcut on your desktop and change the Target: field to read:

 “C:\Games\Age of Mythology\aom.exe” xres=800 yres=600

where 800 x 600 is a resolution that you know your computer can support (if you dont know, right click your desktop and go to properties > settings and copy the resolution from there.

This should work!

If not, you can get the game running by going into your start menu and running it with the SAFE VIDEO shortcut.