I am only an occasional gamer who basically plays 20 year old games. Until last night I had had no problems running HOMM2 and HOMM3 on my Windows 10 machine.

But after the update I find that I couldn't run HOMM2. Then I found there was a similar problem running Age of Empires 3 which I installed outside of GOG. Both games have problems with the Dos Box. After it starts to run, either a blank box appears or in the case of HOMM2, a tiny screen in the corner I couldn't maximize.

I went to GOG and uninstalled HOMM2 and reinstalled it. Now when I try to run it I get a giant black screen which then disappears and the HOMM2 seems to be running in the background, but nothing is showing.

Any idea what the problem is?

Thank you for any help

Age of Empires 3 is a native Windows game and does not use DosBox.

Have you tried installing dosbox separately and seeing if there are any issues with it? What output method are you using in your dosbox settings for HOMM2? Surface, ddraw?

Are you trying to run via Galaxy? Have you tried the offline installers outside of the Galaxy ecosystem?

Age of empires is not a dos game. It is also not sold here.
Uninstall galaxy and run the offline installers. Ensure you don’t install to program files or x86 - this goes for anything.
Check the game specific forum, could be something specific. If I get a chance I will try it tomorrow, could just be a compatability setting, or maybe directplay was disabled.

If a recent Windows update is the culprit you could use System Restore then try again. It's always a good idea to create restore points at regular intervals to be on the safe side.

Try "Verify/Repair" if using Galaxy. The only DOSbox game I have installed currently is Theme Hospital, and it seems to boot up fine.

Seeing as you are a Newbie

There are things called GOGDosConfig or something like that with a shortcut called

DOSBOX CONFIGURATION it's in your games actual folder where the GAME.EXE is

Or if your using galaxy just right click the games title image and from the white menu go to

MANAGE INSTALLATION --> CONFIGURE and experiment with settings until the game works

Try OPENGL or OPENGLNB - WORKS BEST!

Another useful option is Dosbox-staging:

https://dosbox-staging.github.io/v0-75-0/

Take the DOS game files from your GOG installation, put them in a new folder, then mount the new folder in Dosbox-staging.

I think now it has less to do with DosBox than with my setup. I tried to restore the system to a couple of days ago and many things went wrong.

Now that I got it to reboot correctly, I find that both AOE3 which is my own program from the original cds and all the GOG games are simply blanking out after the program starts. With all games, I get a flash and sometimes a black screen and then nothing. But ti says that the game is still running in the background. I also installed the newest graphics drivers right now.

So I'm stuck. If this continues, I'll just have to wipe the disk clean and do a clean install of Windows, which is a big pain in the tush.

Have you tried using System Restore to restore your system back to its state before you installed new windows updates?

Yes. I used system restore. My son has been futzing with my computer and now we get the strange result that neither HOMM2 nor AOE3 will work although HOMM2 will produce a tiny box that can't be maximized in which the game runs. On the other hand Fantasy General works perfectly if launced from the old install that I hadn't played in well over a year. Why it works with one GOG game - FG -- and not HOMM2 is beyond me.

Personally, i wouldn't use Windows 10 for games. Win10 Updates (mandatory or not) are notorious for breaking compatibility.

I would only touch Windows 7 at this point (automatic updates off) where games compatibility will be likely the highest.

For AOE3:
- Try this: https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Age_of_Empires_III#Game_Crashes_on_Startup.2FDoesn.27t_Start
- Reinstall DirectX9
- Install all patches for the game

HOMM2:
- Press Alt+Enter, if it doesn't work, do the next:
- Find it in start menu > Tools > Graphic mode setup: Overlay, fullscreen, no scaling, win res original
In your graphics card control panel: set aspect ratio scaling (by GPU)

If someone has been messing around with your computer, your best bet would be to reinstall everything. Doing the backups is the hardest part as you do not want to forget anything.

Well backing up personal data anyways, i wouldn't back up program files as those would need to be reinstalled anyways. So... Mostly your user directory.