Installing Red Alert 2 Under Win XP Professional

Red Alert 2 wouldn't install under Windows XP Professional on my AMD 3000+ computer. So I searched the web and saw that this was an all too common occurrence under Windows XP Pro.

So first, I tried directly working with Electronic Arts support. Here's what they suggested:(these are all excerpted quotes from all the e-mail that passed between us}:

• "Many of our games that were designed for Windows 95/98 will not detect Windows 2000 as an optimized operating system and therefore may not properly install. The Windows 2000 family of products are developed as business applications and optimized for this unique environment.
  
  Also, most of our games that use Microsoft's DirectX will not function properly in Windows NT or Windows 2000. This is because DirectX is a Microsoft standard for running games in Windows 95 and 98. Even though DirectX is included with Windows 2000, it has been optimized for the Windows 2000 environment and may still have problems with some Windows 95 & 98 games.
  
  Until hardware vendors develop fully compatible drivers, these games may have issues with Windows 2000. New drivers are being released almost daily from hardware manufacturers. To get any game to run in Windows 2000 you will need to make sure that you get the latest drivers for your hardware (video card, sound card, etc.) installed on your system."
   
•  "Lower a Hardware Sound Acceleration setting on your computer to "basic".
  "
• . . . can be due to the cd-rom speed dipping below acceptable reading levels for the InstallShield software to read accurately. First, check to see if there are any scratches, fingerprints, or marks of any kind on the disk surface. Something even as small as a piece of hair or a very light scratch can cause this error. If you find any fingerprints or debris try cleaning the CD with a soft cotton cloth. If after cleaning the CD the error still occurs, or if there are still scratches you can send the CD in to be replaced. "
   
• "If you do not find any scratches, fingerprints, or marks of any kind on your CD, try renaming the InstallShield folder, located in C:\Program Files\Common Files\InstallShield, to InstallShieldOld. Start the installation again to reinstall the InstallShield components with the newest version."
   
• "Update your video card drivers"
   
• "Make sure you have closed any programs or tasked running in the background as sometimes one of the programs can conflict with the game. Background applications such as anti-virus programs are often the cause of conflicts.
   
• " . . .the disc may have corrupted files. Can you try installing that to another system just to check?"
   
• "There is no hard study that SP2 has issues with the game but for some customers uninstalling it works for them. Because this is a software we did not make, that is also the reason why we usually don't endorsed to remove SP2, but you can try if you decided to.
   
• "If the previous steps did not work, and you have 1500mb of space on your hard drive, you can copy the entire cd to the hard drive and install the game from there.

NONE OF THE ABOVE STRATEGIES WORKED FOR ME . . . so I next tried various forums on the Internet:

Here's what I found:

• Use compatibility mode. Set the compatibility mode for Windows 98/Me, Windows 95, or Windows 2000. Then try the reinstall
   
•  Right click My Computer and select "manage" on the left, expand "utilities & services" and highlight "services". In the list on the right, look for "windows installer" double click it and select "automatic" under startup type. Then, click on "start" and close the utility. You may need to start the utility again the next time you need to install a different program, especially if you rebooted, as windows doesn't seem to like to have it running constantly. Any time windows gives you a hard time installing a program, do these steps as part of your troubleshooting. So far, Red Alert 2 was the only program I've encountered that needed these steps, but I'm sure there are a few more out there that need it too."
   
• "Try uninstalling AVG's firewall (which I'm running on this machine), then reboot and try the reinstall again."

NONE OF THESE WORKED EITHER

What did work for me was to take an image file I'd made of the RA2 disk using Alcohol 120%, load it in Alcohol's virtual disk program, then install it from the virtual disk image of the CD. I did this "just for the heck of it" since I was out of options, and was I surprised when it worked.

Note that if you have a problem installing RA2 under Windows XP Pro, that obtaining Alcohol 120% will involve your spending some money if you don't already own it. If you have some other similar tool(s) that'll make a disk image of RA2 and run it in a virtual disk mode, I'd try that before buying Alcohol 120%.

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