The game is completely broken. Just a black screen on startup, no matter what I do.

Yes, I've tried compatibility mode.

Yes, I've tried turning off and on Direct3d and Resolution switching.

I've downloaded compatbiility DLLs and reinstalled numerous times.

Any other ideas?

Windowed Mode (you can expand the window), Run As Administrator, and compat mode for Windows 7, and do those three to both the setup program and the main game .exe?

Don't know if that will work for you.

This was solved.

Basically, it turned out to be the stupidest thing: Rebooting. Somehow that made it work.

An additional trick I found which hopefully should help some people: Download the compatibility manager for Windows and alter the executable to ForceDirectDrawEmulation. Then once in the game, click Cntrl+R to cycle through hardware and software modes. For whatever reason this will clear up remaining peformance issues in AoW SM.