Civ4 Expansions Problems

Last year I was able to install Civ4 on my Windows 7 machine by following the excellent advice from kiwitt (available in this forum). The program works well, although it periodically drops back to the desktop; simply clicking its icon on the task bar resumes play normally.

I decided to install the expansions, again following kiwitt's advice. That seemed to work, but I can't load either program --
--Warlords: I see the "Load" window for about 5 seconds, but then I see the desktop. The hard drive whirrs for around a minute, after which nothing happens.
--BtS: Ditto, except I never see a "Load" window.
In both cases, I never get any sort of error message.

The Properties for all three shortcuts have the same traits: "Compatible with Windows 7" and "Run as administrator", even though only the Civ4 shortcut itself seems to work.

Does anybody have any advice on accessing the Civ4 expansions? Help!

To be honest, I wasn't aware there was a problem installing it on Win 7. Just make sure you install it somewhere else than in Program Files. Windows can be a bit troublesome then, as there are special protections in Program Files due to security reasons. Install it to "Drive (C, D, etc)\Games" or something like that, and installing and running of many games is usually smoother. Often you don't need "run as admin" tricks either, at least in my experience.

I've installed the game myself on Windows 7 and didn't have a problem. Didn't install Warlords this time, but vanilla and BtS installed without a hickup.

If it's the autorun on the disc that doesn't work properly, you can try to navigate to setup.exe (or some similar name) on the CD/DVD instead. Hopefully that works.

What versions of the three are you using? The last of each are: basic 1.74, Warlords 2.13, BTS 3.19. If these are not the versions that you are using, try updating. That might solve the problem. The expansions use files from the basic program. If the versions are not matched properly, that might be your trouble. By using the latest versions, you know they will all work together. You should be able to see the version numbers in the properties screens. You can download the update patches, if you need them, from the "Patch & Update" link on the Civ4 drop down menu at the top of all forum windows.

I installed Civ4 as C:\CIV\CIV4\Civilization4.exe, after which Warlords installed as C:\CIV\CIV4\Warlords\Civ4Warlords.exe, and BtS installed as C:\CIV\Civ4\Beyond the Sword\Civ4BeyondSword.exe. I then ran the patches as kiwitt advises.

I've decided in desperation to re-install the expansions, to see if my problem is in the vanilla versions or in one of the patches. Sadly, invoking serup.exe tells me that the program already exists, and it quits. How do I uninstall the current programs so that I can start over?

This is both puzzling and embarrassing -- for other reasons I did a computer Restart, and both Warlords and BtS now work properly. I have no idea what happened (some good juju?).

Anyway, the problem has apparently evaporated. Go figure...