Deus Ex and Age of Empires should run fine in XP. (You are running XP right?)
I would try making sure your windows is all updated, as well as all of your DirectX, and your sound and video drivers. Also patch whatever version of AoE2 you've got to the
latest patch(depending on weather it's just AoE2 or AoE2 with the Expansion)
If that doesn't work, try
this to see if it's graphics related. The game has a couple problems with certain graphics, and the integrated intel graphics lacks some meat so who knows.
As for Deus Ex, it should probably work fine, but you should still install the
latest patch anyway.
Please post a response as to weather things work or not. This may help others in the future that might share your problem.