EE runtime error.

[atosecond]

I've installed (and reinstalled) EE and AoC from multiple sources (CD, various pirate versions, and GOG.com's) and when I go to run the game, the splash screen appears and then I get a runtime error and the game crashes citing either a low-level engine.dll error or DX7HRDisplay.dll (if run as administrator), this occurs before the intro videos are loaded and applies to both AoC and EE.

I've made sure to purge the registry between installs. Have installed the latest video card drivers in addition to trying to run the game with windows Standard VGA drivers. I have made sure DirectX is updated, and have installed the DirectX June 10 Runtime libraries, I have also installed the Visual C++ 2005 and 2008 libraries. I have tried running as administrator/not as administrator (changes which dll causes the crash, see above), have tried every iteration of compatibility mode from Win 95 to Win Xp SP3. I have also tried running in 256 Colors, in 640x480, Disabling visual themes, disabling desktop composition, and disabling display scaling on high DPI settings. The latter 3 are currently enabled and I have tested these with other compatability permutations. I have tried turning off Hardware Accel (using Standard VGA drivers). I have tried lowering the resolution.

All this has been to no avail.

System Specs:

Core i5-540M
Win 7 x64 Pro
8GB DDR3 1333Mhz
Intel HD Graphics

Now, I'd suspect this is an integrated graphics problem, except for the fact that a few months ago when I had windows 7 32-bit on this computer w/ 4gb of ram, the game ran fine. A new graphics driver has been released in the interim but downgrading the Graphics driver to the version I had previously doesn't resolve the error.

I've also tried this out on Windows XP Mode and fooled around with the different graphics adapters available there and got the same errors.