ATI Graphics

[drone]

Looks pretty similar to the problem described in this Microsoft thread, which does not have a happy ending by the looks of it.

Would it be possible to "downgrade" to Win 7?

[daigaku]

Hi @James Beil,
had similar problems with newer hardware. My solution isn´t that popular, but works smooth as a baby´s ass: Get an old rig, something like ABIT BX133Raid, a 1Ghz Coppermine, 512RAM and something like Geforce4 TI4200 and run the game on Win98SE!! Have a comparable setup (ASUS BXboard), and no problems at all, not even lagging with epic battles. Hardware all together some 80€, and you´re playing happily along ;-)

greetings daigaku

[Stazi]

Get an old rig, something like ABIT BX133Raid, a 1Ghz Coppermine, 512RAM and something like Geforce4 TI4200

But be sure that your video card has some decent amount of ram. I've made a few tests some time ago and found out that battle of two full armies that contain 32 different unites (totally different textures) on a map with big castle and some buildings can consume up to 100mb of video memory (battles 4vs4 go up to 270mb). So, if you want to play in high-res I'd recommend a card with at least 128mb of ram. Something like ATI 9800 pro or better. AFAIK the latest cards that works flawlessly with MTW (even without button fix) are ATI X8xx and GF 6xxx and probably 7xxx (but I'm not sure if they need button fix). ATI X18xx and newer are good too but they need button fix.

[Dellathane]

I hope your still trying to get it working James.

I only have two, rather feeble, suggestions. Firstly try this resolution fix here.

My other suggestion is possibly a virtual machine running that windows ME pack you have on your desk. Does anyone have any experience with running M:TW on a virtual machine? I don't have much hope in that particular solution though I'm afraid

I've never run a virtual machine myself so I can't help you setting one up. These two links are very interesting though because they detail setting up the in-built virtualisation in Win8. This one explains what it does, and this one seems helpful too. The process looks... lengthy, to say the least. You'll also need a not-home version of 8 apparently. If not you can always try VMware or VirtualBox, which I think are both free