Age of Empires 2 Music Problem

[unr3al]

...before anyone thinks I'm nagging about a cracked, illegal copy, no I bought the Ubisoft Age of Empires Collector's Edition DVD this afternoon; I absolutely love the series, AOE2+Exp being my personal favorite.

Isn't the game supposed to have in-game music streaming in the background? I thought it did; the first Age of Empires does? I don't know what to do anymore. Google is completely altzheimer's on the topic. And I'm not using a crack; I tried running it in compatibility mode, I tried running it on my virtual Win98 system, no joy.

Did I mention that I used Google? And just about every other search engine I can think of

 

[Firsttime]

Are you using Vista? If you are there may be no fix. Vista seriously hates AoE2 for some reason. There is a C patch floating around that can fix some problems.

 

[Kromis]

I LOVE the AOE2 soundtrack!

 

[unr3al]

I love it too! And no I'm using XP x64...

EDIT

Also, the Ubisoft Collector's Edition is a fully patched version. As for Vista being a problem; I ran it on my virtual Win98 drive. Same problem. So its not my OS...

 

[Sam25]

Did you try to run the game on Windows 98 compatibility mode? Also make sure your running the latest sound drivers.

I guess there was an in-game option in AoE II for enabling the in-game music?

 

[skulkingghost]

I had problems back whena friend and I would lan it. I ended up installing the game ina vmware image of windows 98.

 

[unr3al]

Originally posted by: Sam25
Did you try to run the game on Windows 98 compatibility mode? Also make sure your running the latest sound drivers.

I guess there was an in-game option in AoE II for enabling the in-game music?

"I tried running it in compatibility mode, I tried running it on my virtual Win98 system, no joy"

I already tried compatibility mode, as you can see. And there is an option for the in-game music volume, not for enabling or disabling; been there, done that; the volume is maxed and I still don't hear one single tune...

 

[Sam25]

Damn...google leads to nothing as you already stated! I only found a thread on another forum regarding a person who couldn't hear the AoE 2 music background music because his audio cable from the dvd drive was not properly connected to the sound card.

Shame really, such a great game this and no apparent fixes?

 

[Dorkenstein]

Are your sound file folders empty by any chance?

 

[TC91]

did you do a "full install?"

 

[SonicIce]

does it use redbook audio? sometimes you gotta have the analog audio cable connected to your soundcard for old games. i dunno about the collectors dvd though.

 

[unr3al]

Too bad SATA drives are digital audio only... No analogue cable

And yes I did a full install.

My sound folders have nothing to do with it; the sound files needed for terrain and game sounds are there but the music must be streamed from the disc. Which it doesn't.

 

[Sam25]

Originally posted by: unr3al
My sound folders have nothing to do with it; the sound files needed for terrain and game sounds are there but the music must be streamed from the disc. Which it doesn't.

Yup, that's true. In AoE II the music remains on the disc and streams from it as you play.

 

[TC91]

Try ripping the disc to an image and then use virtual drive software to play it.

 

[unr3al]

If you rip the disc the music doesn't come along. Thats the whole problem with copied versions of the game.

 

[TC91]

Ripping to a disc image (.iso, .bin, .ccd, .nrg, etc format) will copy the disc bit for bit, everything is copied. And then run a virtual drive software that will read the image and it should work.

 

[unr3al]

Tried it... Didn't work. Still not working...

 

[sert1234]

I have the collectors edition and same problem and i can't solve it yet.Anybody help?

 

[Fox5]

Try copying the music folder over to the base of the install directory. Works for some games.

 

[sert1234]

I tried it but didn't work..

 

[Imagipioneer]

This is the solution that worked for me. (It's posted as a solution to a different problem on Microsoft, but it appears to have worked for this.)

From <http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310439/>:

Click Start, click Control Panel, click Performance and Maintenance, and then click System.
Click the Hardware tab, and then click Device Manager.
Click the + (plus sign) next to DVD/CD-ROM drives, right-click your CD-ROM drive, and then click Properties.
Click to *clear* the Enable digital CD audio for this CD-ROM device check box, and then click OK.
On the File menu, click Exit to close the Device Manager window.

 

[TehMac]

What is Ubisoft doing with AoE2? That's an MS/ES production thru and thru.

 

[Wardawg1001]

Is there still an online community for AoE2? If so where is it?

 

[unr3al]

LoL I didn't know the thread was running this long. Sadly I still haven't found a solution to the problem sheesh running win7 now and still the same. And lately I've been playing rpg's more than rts or even fps. Whats the world getting to...

 

[Copperhell]

This problem sounds really familiar.

Here is an idea: Download the AoE2 demo from Microsoft's site (http://www.microsoft.com/games/age2/downloads.htm) and play it.

Does the music work there? If it does, try copying the Sounds folder of the demo to your original game. Theorotically, this should work. Good luck with it, bro.