Civ III disk won't install on any computer

[Goshen]

So, I picked up a brand new copy of Civ III the other day, figuring it would be a good game for my new laptop. I decided to set it up on my desktop PC first, running XP, and the game ran perfectly. After I tried to install a copy of Play the World, however, something, unbeknownst to me, went terribly wrong and now I can neither play nor uninstall nor reinstall the game. I later tried to set up the game on my laptop, running Windows 7, whereupon I encountered the same problems: the game didn't install properly and I had to go through and delete entries in the registry manually to fully uninstall it.

My guess is that something must have happened to the disk, but I can't imagine how. It certainly couldn't have sustained any physical damage and I don't see how the data could have been altered in any way. If anybody can help me out here, I'd really appreciate it.

 

[EvilConqueror]

I decided to set it up on my desktop PC first, running XP, and the game ran perfectly. After I tried to install a copy of Play the World, however, something, unbeknownst to me, went terribly wrong and now I can neither play nor uninstall nor reinstall the game.

Are you saying that you installed Complete and then tried to install Play the World?

 

[Goshen]

I don't believe so. The copy of Civ III I installed did not include any expansions.

 

[EvilConqueror]

Sorry, I'm still confused. You installed the basic version of the game without any expansions and then you tried to install the Play the World expansion and that broke it? The fact that the game was working perfectly and then broke seems to be the key.

 

[Goshen]

That is exactly what happened. When I tried to run Play the World, it kept crashing as soon as I tried to start a game. When I uninstalled Play the World, the original Civ III had stopped working as well.