EB suddenly stopped working

[Arabishte]

I began a Koinon Hellenon campaign yesterday, played for an hour or so and took Corinth, then got off the computer to do some other things. I quit out of EB normally, and left the computer on.

When I came back a couple of hours later to play some more, EB wouldn't start at all. When I clicked on it, only the Vanilla RTW image flashed up for a few seconds (the very first thing you see when you load vanilla, the red box), and nothing loaded. No one had used the computer; nothing changed between EB working and not working.

So I just recently tried reinstalling EB, but still have exactly the same problem. Should I try downloading it again? Or try reinstalling RTW and all of the patches completely first, then reinstalling EB? Or is there some other thing I should do?

Any help would really be appreciated, thanks.

[bovi]

Please run a validation (post results here) and verify that you have not installed EB under Program Files. Additionally, please post the full Target field of the shortcut you are using to start EB.

[Arabishte]

Thanks for the reply. Before you posted this, I realised that my RTW and EB were installed in Program files, so I used add/remove program to uninstall everything related to RTW. (I don't know why EB was working for 6 months in program files before it stopped though)

But now I have another, more serious problem. Upon attempting to reinstall RTW via the original disk, it fails. As the "installation bar" progresses, the 'action' written above it stays the same throughout. Something like ...\sounds\voice2. This carries on while the first four bars load, which takes about 20 minutes (the whole installation used to take me only 10 mins max). Then there's a popup which says "Error: ...sounds\voice2 does not exist or cannot be found. Please confirm that such a file exists" or something of that sort. And on that popup, there are two options; "retry" and "cancel".

When I press retry, about another 20 minutes pass while the next three bars, and the text above still shows that its installing the same thing as before. Then another of the same popup. And so on it goes, until all the bars are full, and then it keep going so that about every 20 minutes there is another popup and nothing changes in between.

My disk has a few small scratches on it, but in between it's working and not installing properly, it wasn't removed from my PC at all.

What could be the problem? I'm fairly sure that I'll be able to get everything in the right place, if only I could actually install RTW.

Thanks.

[Nachtmeister]

Sorry to have to say this, but apparently either it will work on a new attempt - or your RTW disk is damaged, meaning you'll have to purchase a new one.
Try breathing on the data surface, then rub gently with a soft piece of cloth, then try installing again - sometimes this works with old disks. If it doesn't do the trick, you could try reading with a different cd-rom drive...