To confirm what I suspected I have just installed AoE Gold.
There are two exe files, the "aoe.exe" and the "eaw.exe".
The desktop shortcut points to the "aoe.exe".
EAW has problems with exes that are not named "eaw.exe".
There are some problems in single player mode, and they cannot be used at all in multiplayer.
The the "aoe.exe" is a re-named copy of the "eaw.exe", both are the Code Group's 1.28c MP02a, so use the "eaw.exe" to avoid these additional problems.
The installer also writes to the registry. Years ago the newer operating systems started to do strange things with "ini" files. As a result we advised people to install EAW, copy the folder, paste it somewhere else, and then uninstall EAW. I would recommend that users do the same with AoE.
Yes I am running 1.28c, I installed it over that build. I have the game
1.28c and EAWPro files are incompatible