Careful here, ES might send their henchmen to delete this post. On their agecommunity.com they are editing all posts attempting to support those with Windows 2000, and replacing the helpful instructions with:

"This is not supported."

and

"If you want to get banned keep it up. WIN2k is not supported and you are not authorized to give support for it in our forums."

They've denied a conspiracy before, but how can they deny it now?

They are doing their duty based on their contracts with Microsoft. ES people are considered "Microsoft Official People". They must behave under Microsoft's rules as Microsoft people. ES would want nothing to impair their relations with MS, so this behavior is totally undertandable.

[This message has been edited by Lysimachus (edited 10-20-2005 @ 04:19 PM).]

Telling us that they won't support an OS due to development cost and then not allowing their "community" to support it for free??? Yeah, totally undertandable.

It isn't a technical issue or a "money issue with testing," or anything like that. Microsoft has a scheme to get everyone in the world to update to the latest versions of everything, and they have bogus licensing agreements that literally take your rights away; more and more, trying to get COPYRIGHT laws enforced to the max. Copyrights are okay in today's world because they arn't enforced! Microsoft is slowly slowly pulling palladium / digital rights management / and copyrights to power and eventually will be taking people's digital rights away. They didn't have XP only for no reason; it's all part of the scheme; and not enough people know about what they are doing for it to make a difference; or to even remotely stop their plot. Huge companies are in on palladium and DRM. to read more about this go here http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/tcpa-faq.html I suggest reading the whole article. The fact that AOE3 is acclaimed XP only is not shocking; and was even predictable. It's a good thing for this forum though so people will know how to install the game on 2k! I wonder about all those noobs out there who arn't going to think about searching the net / or anything - and who are actually going to buy XP just to play this game! - POOR NOOBS ;_; really sucks. =\

Here are a few more links about this; and I HIGHLY recommend reading the article above, along with these.

http://www.epic.org/privacy/consumer/microsoft/palladium.html

http://www.newsforge.com/business/02/10/21/1449250.shtml?tid=19

http://www.epic.org/privacy/drm/

Quote:

Yeah I pity them too. Fools and their money... my money soon after I sell the game on EBay.

Thank you for posting this, Timooo ! I don't have windows 2000, but I'm sure many players out there do, and I'm sure they'd really appreciate this.

Completely useless, but thanks for trying.

The game still refuses to believe that it's installed- when I put disk one in it insists that I must install it- not play it, even though all the files are aleady there.

Thank you too Alexander =D I appreciate it. =)

Hey ywing pilot... (A solution)

Quote:

If you try to run it from the autorun, yes... you will see "install" (The isntallation doesn't install anything in the registry.) You have to use the game icon; If you don't have the game icon, goto your game folder right click on aoe3.exe and click Send to > Desktop.

[This message has been edited by Timooo (edited 10-21-2005 @ 04:25 AM).]

"AOE3.exe" doesn't exist unfortunatly. The game doesn't create it when I do it this way, which makes things difficult.

[This message has been edited by ywing pilot (edited 10-21-2005 @ 05:50 PM).]

Quoted from ywing pilot:

Can you confirm this, Timooo?

I have the game successfully installed on windows 2000, and the aoe3.exe was created. If you follow my guide 100% with the recommended installation path; it will be in C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\Age of Empires 3\Age Of Empires III\

Conclusively, something went wrong with your particular installation (due to unknown or known causes) or otherwise.

[This message has been edited by Timooo (edited 10-23-2005 @ 05:55 AM).]

im having problems with the MSXML... i do not know where to point the installation of files

oh, my goodness! A company is trying to get people to buy its products and keep people from stealing them! We should have them sued for conspiracy.

2000 is the only other version of Windows on which I would remotely consider installing AoE3. If a computer doesn't have XP, it's most likely too old to run the game at descent fps.

Supporting 2K would be rediculous for ES. Not very many people use it for home computers, since it wasn't designed for them. That being said, I find it very odd that they wouldn't allow the community to help each other out on it. I can understand them not wanting to spend their own time on it, though.

I have added a new part to the installation instructions about exactly how to install the AOE 1.01 update. And also corrected an error about msxml. You must download msxml.msi Not msxml4msms.exe Thanks.

[This message has been edited by Timooo (edited 11-10-2005 @ 04:35 AM).]

Timooo
Thnx for your excellent install instructions for this game now working under windows 2000,if anyone has trouble installing patch as timooo says you really need to make sure you have exact path sorted out,my error was to copy and paste patch location from timooo post,it would not work
i copied and pasted location from the shortcut on desktop instead from the start in box and now patch installs no problems...

thnx again

toddz

Quote:

But not on ESO I assume?

timooos guide worked just fine for me.
but i run into troubles updating to 1.01
its complaining about an invalid patch file, (and then it shows the temp dir where it aparently copied the patchfile to)
tried redownloading and re-installing the patch,
doesnt seem to work though.
n e i dz on how this can be fixed?
i cant play the game now because it doesnt continue the campaign for some vague reason. (2nd level, 2nd game: i have met all the objectives, but it doesnt show; you're victorious! )

thanx

wooooooooooooooooo it works! thank you!

wait, does the 1.03 patch install the same way as 1.01? thanks

Damn robber barons...

Hmm, I tried getting the 1.03 patch working with the instructions you gave, but it says "there's a problem with you game installation. you may have to reinstall it".

Is this the error it gives when you screw up the directory? Or does your way of updating not work with 1.03?

Cause I really wanna go online...

Techubus found a great (although tedious) workaround that lets you install AoE3 properly, meaning you can uninstall it as usual, and the autopatcher even works. I had absolutely no part in figuring this out, I'm just posting this here for the good of all win2k users.

Quoted from "Techubus":

Summed-up, step-by-step version:

1. Download the following zip file: http://www.megagames.com/cgi/download/download.cgi?action=search&category=cracks&search=AGE.OF.EMPIRES.3.WIN2KINSTALLPATCH.ANDREW.FIX.ZIP, unzip its contents

2. Copy the file "Age of Empires III.msi" from your AoE3 CD1, to your hard drive.

3. Download ORCA, at http://www.pek.com/projects/msi/orca.zip, unzip its contents

4. Load orca.exe. Go to File, Open, and find "Age of Empires III.msi" (the one you copied to your hard drive). On the left side, find the table named "Binary" and click it. On the right side, find the line "InstallScript", and double-click on the "[Binary Data]" of that line. NOTE: If nothing happens when you double-click "[Binary Data]", exit Orca, find "Age of Empires III.msi", go to its properties, and deselect "read-only". Click browse, and find the file named "InstallScript" (the one that came with the first .zip you downloaded), and click OK. Then be sure to SAVE the change you made.

5. This part may get tricky. Copy ALL the files from your AoE3 CD1, EXEPT "Age of Empires III.msi", to your hard drive. Apparently this works fine with third party file managing programs (such as PowerDesk), but may not work properly if you're using Windows' default Explorer. If this is the case, scroll up to where Techubus mentions "Alcohol" (NOT the drink :P)

6. 00002.tmp will most likely NOT copy over. It may give you an error. Just leave it be for now.

7. Once this is finished, copy over your modified "Age of Empires III.msi" into the root folder of the CD you just copied to your hard drive.

8. In this same folder, create a new file and name it "00002.tmp" (without quotes).

9. While it MAY be possible to run your modified CD1 off of your hard drive, it's safer to burn everything to a CD. Take all the files you'd copied to your hard drive (INCLUDING the modified "Age of Empires III.msi" and "00002.tmp"), and burn it all to a CD. Name the CD "AoE III Disc 1".

10. Pop this burned CD into your CD-ROM drive and run "Setup.exe". If all goes well, it should run and install just like normal. Sometimes, during installation, it may seem to pause at a file, and stop installing. If this is the case, remove your burned CD, wait until the setup says "Please insert disc 1", and insert the real Disc 1. You are past the OS check by this point anyway, so this will work fine.

11. Pop your real Disc 1 into your CD drive and launch AoE3. Success! You can update your game through the in-game auto-updater. There seems to still be a problem playing online though, as it gives the error: "ESO does not support your game version." when you try to connect. However, this is an error many XP users are getting as well, so there's still hope. In the mean time, you have a properly installed, patchable version of AoE3. Enjoy!

Again, I had no part whatsoever in figuring this out. This was Techubus' genius. I just thought I'd rewrite the instructions to help people out (As I had numerous issues while trying to get this working :P). If you have any problems installing the game this way, please visit http://aoe3.heavengames.com/cgi-bin/forums/display.cgi?action=ct&f=1,27699,0,10. Techubus answered all the issues I had there, you might be having the same problems.

Good luck!

(and Techubus, maybe you should make a topic for this, depending on how much this one gets viewed)

[This message has been edited by rippy (edited 01-02-2006 @ 05:20 PM).]

Thanks for cleaning up the instructions, should be much easier to follow now

I would love to make this a new topic and have the mods sticky it but I have a feeling they wont, no love for the 2k users

how do you uninstall aoe3 under win2k is another question.
can someone help?

Hello, the guide worked to get the install up. But it freezes when I hit install.