Failure to Launch or Freeze After Launching - Used to work perfectly

I purchased AoE2 DE through Steam, initially had some issues but I was using Windows 7.

I upgraded to Windows 10 and it looked like it had solved the issues, I’ve about 30 hours played over the past week! I’ve gone to launch today and it just completely froze my PC causing me to have to hard restart. I’ve tried multiple times to launch and different things happen, either:

  • Fails to launch completely
  • Launches, intro video will start, the sound is distorted, it then freezes and crashes
  • I make it to the main menu, try to click something and it freezes and crashes.

When I say crashes I am talking my whole PC and not just AoE. I’ve gone through all the suggested fixes on the official AoE page - Drivers, Steam verification, reinstall, etc. and no luck.

Any other suggestions please I’m desperate to get this fixed?

Thanks