I suspect that the 'restore original settings' option in RefreshForce might have also fixed the problem, by allowing RoN to choose refresh rates automatically. On a related note, I wasn't able to change resolutions in Rise of Nations until I set my desktop to the same resolution that I wanted in the game again, because the refresh rates of the different modes (say, 1024x7x1024, on my machine) were different, RoN seemed unwilling to offer the choice to switch modes. its possible to change resolution via nGlide emulator settings.

If I reran RefreshForce and chose 'Restore Original Settings' (effectively clearing all the mode information that RefreshForce had determined and set), the problem went away HL2 ran fine and would automatically determine the optimal refresh rate (which was higher than the usual default of 60Hz seen in older games in XP). Microsoft Age of Empires II: The Conquerors Expansion Readme File June 2000 © Microsoft Corporation, 2000. 1 NASCAR Racing 2 3dfx-patch (Beta) NBA Live 99 About Glide 3DFX For answering this.

I noticed recently that, after running RefreshForce to fix the 60Hz-refresh-in-games issue in XP, Half-Life 2 started exiting abruptly with an error about not being able to set video modes.

Age of empires 2 change resolution