Is there any way to make Age of Empires 2 start in windows mode?

I have Age of Empires 2 and the expansion for it, is there any way to start it in a window instead of in full screen mode?
Alt – Tab works great, except for one minor detail. When i use it it causes the graphics to go all fuzzy. Everything is fine before that, but once i alt – tab everything becomes fuzzy. Thats why i was asking about a window mode.

No tags for this post.



3 Responses to “Is there any way to make Age of Empires 2 start in windows mode?”

1. Joker says:

   February 8, 2008 at 3:49 am

   Umm i dont think you can but if you worried about having other programs running while your trying to play it use Alt+Tab to change the current program thats active you wont actually be able to what you switching to but once you change it to something that is a window view you’ll be able to see the taskbar again and can switch to what ever you want.
2. john says:

   August 1, 2009 at 3:28 pm

   the fuzzy graphics is call “toxic grass” and is a issue with vista. you should be able to alt-tab again and fix it. there is no fix for this at the moment.
3. xslx says:

   December 23, 2009 at 1:56 pm

   I actually found a way to play it in window mode (conquerors). But you have to set Color Depth to 8 bits (you can use Resolution Changer sx2 for example).
   Open age2_x1.exe in some Hex Editor and search for 89AC24BC090000, there should be only one occurence of this sequence, then replace it with 899C24BC090000 and it will run in window.
   If you didn’t set color depth to 8 bits you will get an error message.
   In order to actually play it, you have to set game resolution in game options to minimum value.
   However I find it little laggy in window mode.