➤ Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition crashes on startup, does not start or lags 🎮

Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition is the newly launched real-time strategy video game available for Windows and Mac platforms. Although the game has remastered graphics and music, it has received mixed reviews on Steam for the PC version.

It goes without saying that most of the reviews are also based on game stability or performance which seems quite buggy at the moment. Here we have provided the steps to fix Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition freezing on startup, won't start or lag.

There is no doubt that almost all video games are available for the Microsoft Windows platform, but many of them also have more bugs and errors for PC users, which is not expected.

We can't really deal with it, but we can definitely try as many workarounds as possible below to quickly fix most of the issues on our own, which is a great thing. Furthermore, we can also assume that with the few patch updates in the future, most of the bugs will be fixed.

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Why does Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition keep crashing?

As mentioned we can try the solutions below, it is the first preference to understand what reasons may be the source of the crash on startup problem. Here we have outlined some of the main reasons behind the crash when launching PC games.

Your PC configuration may not meet the game's system requirements. In this case, check the minimum and recommended system requirements below to better understand this game.
Maybe some glitch or caching issue is causing the boot crash problem on your PC. In this scenario, restarting the computer will do the job.
Game files are damaged or missing during the download or installation process.
Make sure you are not using an outdated Windows build or graphics driver version.
Perhaps the DirectX version is out of date or not compatible with the Direct3D Hardware Feature Level 11.0 GPU.
Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition game or client is out of date.
Some of the apps running in the background are likely to consume too much CPU / memory which reduces system performance and the game starts crashing.
It is also possible that antivirus software or Windows Firewall security is preventing game files from working properly.

Minimum system requirements:

Requires a processor and an 64 bit operating system
System operational: Windows 10 version 18362.0 or later
Processor: Intel i3-2105 @ 3.1GHz or AMD Phenom II X4 973 with an average CPU Passmark score of 3735 or higher
Memory: 8 GB of RAM
Graphics: GeForce GT 430, Radeon HD 5570, or Intel HD 4400 with an average Passmark G3D Mark of 570 or better
DirectX: version 11
Network: broadband internet connection
Memory: 42 GB of available space
Additional notes: 2 GB VRAM

Recommended system requirements:

Requires a processor and an 64 bit operating system
System operational: Windows 10 version 18362.0 or later
Processor: Intel i5-3300 @ 3,0 GHz or AMD FX-8350 or equivalent with an average
CPU Passmark score of 4100 or higher
Memory: 16 GB of RAM
Graphics: GeForce GTX 980 or Radeon R9 Fury or equivalent with an average Passmark G3D Mark of 9500 or better
DirectX: version 11
Network: broadband internet connection
Memory: 42 GB of available space
Additional notes: 4 GB VRAM

Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition crashes on startup, does not start or lags

Now, without wasting any more time, let's move on to the following steps. Note that both Nvidia and AMD graphics drivers are well optimized for Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition game. So, if in case, you haven't updated your graphics driver yet, do so first.

1. Update the graphics drivers

If you are using Nvidia graphics card, update the GeForce Experience app on your PC from Nvidia's official site here. But if you are using the AMD graphics card on your system, update the latest AMD drivers from here.

2. Disable Steam Overlay

apri Steam on Windows.
Go to Settings > Click on In-game
Click the checkbox to disable " Enable Steam overlay in game ".
Once the check mark is removed, click OK .

3. Adjust the Discord settings

starts Discord > Click User settings .
Select Voice and video from the left sidebar.
Scroll down a bit and click Advanced .
Next, disable OpenH264 Video Codec fornito da Cisco System, Inc .
Then disable Enable high priority package quality of service .
Now go on Overlay .
You can also disable the in-game overlay .
So, go on Appearance .
Go to Advanced .
Disable the hardware acceleration .
When finished, reboot your system.

4. Adjust the Nvidia control panel settings

click on Adjust preview image settings in 3D settings .
Select Use advanced 3D image settings .
Then, start the Nvidia control panel .
click on Manage 3D settings > go to Global settings .
Additionally, you can also adjust some of the other options:
- Disable the sharpness of images
- Enable threaded optimization
- Use maximum performance for savings energetic
- Disable the low latency mode
- Set the texture filter quality on the Performance mode

5. Change the AMD control panel settings

Go to Global graphics .
- disable Radeon Anti-Lag
- disable Radeon Boost
- Use the application settings for the mode anti-alias
- Tax Anti-aliasing method su Multi-sampling
- Disable the morphological filter
- Disable the sharpness of images
- Disable the anisotropic filter
- Use the Performance mode for the texture filter quality
- You can also enable the Surface format optimization
- AMD optimization for the Tesselation mode
- Wait for V sync : deactivate it
- Use AMD optimization for the cache of shader
- Disable OpenGL Triple Buffering
- Turn off the layer maximum tessellation
- Set the graphics for the workload area of But by the full GPU acceleration tech
- disable Radeon Chill
- Disable the target frame rate control

6. Verify game files via Steam

Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition players on the Steam client can follow the steps below:

Open the Steam Library by logging into your account.
You can find the game Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition.
Right-click on the game and click Property.
Select the scheda Local files.
Then click Check integrity game files.
Wait for the process and restart the game to check if the problem is solved or not.

7. Uninstall the recent Windows 10 update

A couple of days ago, Microsoft released a new update for Windows 10 with KB4535996. Hence, this particular cumulative update for Windows 10 is quite flawed and causes so many errors or problems.

Go to the menu Start > click on Settings.
So, go on Update and security.
click on View update history.
Now if you can see there is an update with KB4535996 already installed. Make sure you uninstall it.
Here you will see the option Uninstall updates at the top of the page.
Click on it and select the cumulative update version mentioned.
Right click on it> Select Uninstall.
It may take some time to clear the update and the system may reboot automatically.
Have a little patience and you can also manually restart your Windows PC (if necessary).

8. Remove the temporary files

Press the Windows key + R on the keyboard to open the RUN program.
Now, type %temp% and press Enter.
You will get a bunch of temp files on one page.
Select all files by pressing Ctrl + A on the keyboard.
Then, press Shift + Delete on the keyboard to remove all files.
Sometimes some of the temporary files cannot be deleted. So, leave them as they are and close them.

9. Set the default CPU and graphics speed

As most of the users always want to use ultra high performance from the CPU and GPU from day one. Hence, most of the users buy an overclocked version or manually increase the overclock speed.

So, if you have also overclocked your GPU speed and after doing so are experiencing related issues with bottlenecks or lags or crashes, set it to the default mode.

You can also use the MSI Afterburner tool or the Zotac Firestorm application to lower the clock speed. Once finished, you can run the Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition game to check if it crashes on startup or not.

That's all. We hope this guide was useful to you. You can comment below for any questions.