I sent this in to support as well, but might as well see if someone else figured it out already.
Age of Wonders crashes whenever the sound quality is set to anything but `off'. If done in the config tool, the game crashes on showing the menu (the intro plays just fine, if enabled). If done during the game, the game crashes, even when music and sound (not quality) are set to off.

So, does anyone have an idea on how to fix this, besides playing without any sound at all?

SOLUTION: on windows 7, exclude Age of Wonders from Data Execution Prevention. Found the solution here so a lot of thanks to Carpetsmoker over there. Go to Control Panel>System>Advanced System Settings>Advanced Tab>click Settings under Performance>Data Execution Prevention Tab>add AoW.exe to the exclusion list with the add button.

DId you get an error message ? I did a thread about my CTD problem, it might be the same.

Do you have a new system? I've got it to work on a Pentium 120 with Win95 but playing with music and sound makes it slow as molasses. The point is that the music and sound seems to be the thing that use most memory so might that be your problem?

Nope, no error message. The game just crashes to the desktop.
Relatively new, a 13" laptop running win7, dual core 2.26 GHz and 3 GB RAM. Doubt memory use is the problem.

I was thinking more about tweaking DosBox memory handling. Don't know how though.

You can't run AOW in DOSBOX, AOW is a Windows only program.

If you use Vista or Seven perhaps you should try one of those things to make older games work like choosing XP compability or run as administrator?
I runs nice on my XP machine.

This shouldn't be the problem since it says Windows Vista, Windows 7 (32 & 64 bit) compatible on the front page, but perhaps there is a problem with some configurations that can be solved this way?

Thanks, but that doesn't work either. I tried all the compatibility/run as administrator options. Still didn't work. Also tried to reinstall, no difference.. it's probably something very system specific, some odd program, codec, driver or hardware causing trouble :/

Have you tried ending all the tasks possible (that is not needed to have sound) in the Ctr + Alt + Del menu and the starting it?

Uncheck "Use Direct Sound" in the settings tool (if you haven't tried it). This might be something with your soundcard drivers.

yup. No change.

Thanks, but I already tried that, no change.

also tried messing around with the folder settings (not read-only, ownership), no change.
Updated my sound drivers.
No one else is having this problem?
Anyone here with the K-Lite codec pack installed, and/or conexant audio who has the game running normally?

Fixed! See OP.
First person to copy-paste the solution part from my original post will get marked as the solution (free rep!), so the topic is Solved for future reference.