Cannot install games from DVD

External Since: Feb 27, 2008 Posts: 2

I built this WinXP Home Ed. SP2 system in March 2007.

Motherboard is a DFI Infinity nF4X, DVD drive is a Samsung Writemaster. HDD
is SATA but the DVD drive is IDE.

Everything has worked fine on it, the Samsung drive plays movie DVDs, burns
and reads CDs and data DVDs with no problem -- EXCEPT I now find I cannot
install games on DVD with it.

Attempting to install Command & Conquer: The First Decade (first thing I
ever attempted to install from DVD), to begin with the drive did not seem to
see the autorun file (autorun always worked fine for installations from CD).
So I explored the DVD and could see all the files all right, and could open
text files such as readme, etc., but when I tried double-clicking the
Setup.exe file all I got was the error message "D:\Setup.exe is not a valid
Win32 application." Trying other executable files produced the same result.

The DVD is known good: After failing on this machine, I installed the C&C
games on my other WinXP computer with no problem at all.

Now I've tried to install Neverwinter Nights Platinum (also DVD) on this DFI
system with just about the same result. When the disc is inserted it does
not autoplay, and attempting to run Setup.exe manually by double-clicking on
it produces the same "D:\Setup.exe is not a valid Win32 application." Trying
other executable files gives either that same error message, or "Only part
of a ReadProcessMemory or WriteProcessMemory request was completed." Nothing
works.

Thinking an update to the system BIOS and/or drivers might help, I went to
the DFI site, but for this motherboard they don't seem to have anything
newer than 2005 -- even though SiSoft says my present BIOS is dated March 1,
2006.

Anyone have any ideas about this? I hate to think I'm stuck with a
relatively new system that will never install programs from DVD, since it
seems likely that more and more things will be published on DVD.

Neil

External Since: Jan 11, 2004 Posts: 502

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22D%3A%5CSetup.exe+is+not+a+vali...in32+ap

"Neil Harrington" <neil RemoveThis @private.address> wrote in message
news:1vidnR6_qqs7P1janZ2dnUVZ_smnnZ2d@comcast.com...
>I built this WinXP Home Ed. SP2 system in March 2007.
>
> Motherboard is a DFI Infinity nF4X, DVD drive is a Samsung Writemaster.
> HDD
> is SATA but the DVD drive is IDE.
>
> Everything has worked fine on it, the Samsung drive plays movie DVDs,
> burns
> and reads CDs and data DVDs with no problem -- EXCEPT I now find I cannot
> install games on DVD with it.
>
> Attempting to install Command & Conquer: The First Decade (first thing I
> ever attempted to install from DVD), to begin with the drive did not seem
> to
> see the autorun file (autorun always worked fine for installations from
> CD).
> So I explored the DVD and could see all the files all right, and could
> open
> text files such as readme, etc., but when I tried double-clicking the
> Setup.exe file all I got was the error message "D:\Setup.exe is not a
> valid
> Win32 application." Trying other executable files produced the same
> result.
>
> The DVD is known good: After failing on this machine, I installed the C&C
> games on my other WinXP computer with no problem at all.
>
> Now I've tried to install Neverwinter Nights Platinum (also DVD) on this
> DFI
> system with just about the same result. When the disc is inserted it does
> not autoplay, and attempting to run Setup.exe manually by double-clicking
> on
> it produces the same "D:\Setup.exe is not a valid Win32 application."
> Trying
> other executable files gives either that same error message, or "Only part
> of a ReadProcessMemory or WriteProcessMemory request was completed."
> Nothing
> works.
>
> Thinking an update to the system BIOS and/or drivers might help, I went to
> the DFI site, but for this motherboard they don't seem to have anything
> newer than 2005 -- even though SiSoft says my present BIOS is dated March
> 1,
> 2006.
>
> Anyone have any ideas about this? I hate to think I'm stuck with a
> relatively new system that will never install programs from DVD, since it
> seems likely that more and more things will be published on DVD.
>
> Neil
>