Civ2 ToT on Win7 64-bit -- setup.exe won't even run (well, sorta)

I've seen the threads about 64-bit patches for Civ2: ToT, but they all seem to assume I'm able to install the game in the first place, which I'm not. If I launch setup.exe, the program runs, but nothing happens. No window pops up, nothing at all. The only signs that anything happened at all are that my cursor shows a "wait" icon for one or two seconds, and setup.exe appears in Task Manager, just sitting there until I kill it.

Things I've tried so far, to no avail:
* Changing my CD-ROM drive letter to D:
* Ripping the CD and using Daemon Tools Lite instead of the physical CD
* Closing down all programs using the CPU

The CD doesn't look scratched or smudged, so it seems unlikely that physical damage could be the cause.

I haven't yet tried installing an older version of Windows in a VM and installing it on that. I bet it'll probably work, but I'm trying to avoid doing that. Any ideas?

furrykef said:

The only signs that anything happened at all are that my cursor shows a "wait" icon for one or two seconds, and setup.exe appears in Task Manager, just sitting there until I kill it.

Click to expand...

Are you by any chance not connected to the internet during installation (or is a firewall blocking outgoing traffic)? Windows 7's Game Explorer might be interfering. I've seen this happen for the game itself, not sure about the setup, but it's worth a shot.

Nah, my internet's working fine and there shouldn't be any firewall issues.

I forgot to mention that the autoplay program on the CD works fine (the colors are ugly but maybe that's not unusual). It's only the setup.exe that doesn't work, whether I launch it directly or from the autoplay.

As a workaround, you could do a "manual install", by extracting data1.cab from the CD to your HD. It's an InstallShield CAB file, but since it's quite an old game there are a couple of tools that can extract it (e.g. universal extractor). Or install it in a VM, and copy the files back to the host OS.

I finally got it to run. I'd just about given up hope.

I did give up on getting setup.exe to run. So I installed WinXP in VirtualBox and setup.exe worked fine there. However, the redbook audio didn't work in the game, and when I went to pick a track, it told me I needed to have the Civ2 CD in the drive. I realized Windows Media Player couldn't play the redbook audio in the VM either. Setting VirtualBox to use passthrough for the CD drive allowed redbook audio to play in Windows Media Player in the VM, but not in the game. It'd just freeze the VM for a few seconds when selecting an audio track and then not play any music.

So I copied the installed game's files back to my host OS, as you'd suggested. Occasionally civ2.exe silently fails the same way setup.exe did (even with TOTLauncher.exe), but if so it'll usually work if I try again, so no biggie. I still couldn't get redbook audio, though. Then I changed the CD-ROM drive letter to D: and voilà!

Crazy, huh? All this just to get a stupid game to work... anyway, thanks for the help.

It seems that it's still not perfect. It plays only one song from the CD and then stops playing music until I select another track manually. I don't remember the game behaving this way. I suppose that'd be a topic for another thread, though...

Howdy i feel like a total tool but how do i install the game to a vm. i have got windows xp pro 32bit using oracle vm virtual box if that helps

my absolute all time fav game and have been unable to play since my old pc died

In the VM settings, you can specify the optical drive(s) for the virtual machine. I assume you know how to do this since you've installed windows xp. If you have a physical cd, set the VM's optical drive as "Host Drive", then put the physical CD into your computer's drive. If you have an ISO copy of the cd, just put that iso into the virtual drive.

If you have an executable file instead of a cd, you should be able to share a folder between your host OS and the VM using the appropriate option in the VM settings.