wow, a new xp install problem!

[tgkeke]

i bought alpha centauri looong ago and had much fun with it on my 200mhz Win95 system. but now i have a winxp pro system and i've been trying to install SMAC, but, but it's not working. ealier, i'd doubleclick the setup, it'd say "C:/PROGRA~/SYMANTEC/s32evnt1.dll This is a problem blah blah Close/Ignore?" and i spent all afternoon trying to find a solution, scouring all kinds of problem forums.

if i ignored the warning, the SMAC pre-install screen would come up (you know with the centered rectangular box cover and the little "InstallShield is loading SMAC..." and a little percent bar in the corner) and it would make it to 100%, but then nothing would happen. No install wizard came up. I check in Task Manager and two unfamiliar programs were there: ntvdm and wowexec.exe. I checked on these and it turns out they're WinXP's tricks for running 16-bit programs or something like that.

i installed the symantec program and tried running setup.exe again, and thankfully, the close/ignore dialog doesn't come up anymore. HOWEVER, it still isn't loading the setup/install, just as if i had ignored the dialog box. so what am i supposed to do?
if i run terran.exe off the disc, it works fine, but if i can't install the game to my HD, then i can't install Alien Crossfire. And i paid the full 20 or 30 dollars for that when it came out! So what can i do? anybody have any suggestions at all?

[Barinthus]

Have you tried the xp compatibility patch? You can find it here... http://www.firaxis.com/downloads_pro...?product=1,2,7

[tgkeke]

well that's the thing...the patch does nothing because i'd have to install first
and i can't even install
if i could install, it'd all be good.
if there was some alternate way to install, without using installshield, i'd be good i think

[Method]

this is odd, it installed for me just fine on XP pro. All I did was install it from the autorun...

[gwillybj]

You need to temporarily disable your antivirus utility before trying to install anything that uses InstallShield. They don't like each other.
You mention Symantec, so I'll assume you use Norton Antivirus.
There should be an icon in the system tray (down by the clock) which shows "Norton Antivirus Auto-Protect Enabled" when you hover the cursor over it. Right-click it and select "Disable Auto-Protect". The text might be different if your NAV is not the same version as mine.
Re-insert the PP CD and let it autorun the installer.
When installation is finished, re-enable NAV Auto-Protect.

[Barinthus]

Yeah that should do the trick, gwillybj.

[tgkeke]

i actually don't use norton. i had used norton a while ago, but the subscription expired so i uninstalled and now i use AVG. buuuut, i still tried shutting down all other programs i had running (AVG, peerguardian, popupxp) and the install did the same thing. then i tried restarting the computer, with all the programs turned off for autostartup (set in msconfig), and STILL the install did the same thing

[tgkeke]

and i've also already tried copying the entire cd to my harddisk and installing from there. same problem.

[tgkeke]

and i've also cleaned my disk and it doesn't look like there are any scratches on it. i'm THIS close (|----|) to downloading a warez version and seeing if that'll work. and it'll be perfectly legal too, so why not...

[Barinthus]

doublepost

[Barinthus]

Oh man, hope you figure this out. And let us know if you did, how you did it for future references.

[Petek]

Going back to your original post, the problem appears to be with s32evnt1.dll. If you are no longer running any Symantec programs, try renaming this DLL, reboot and see what happens. If that doesn't help, Google on "s32evnt.dll". This turns up lots of hits and similar problems.

[tgkeke]

i found the dll and deleted it, but no such luck in starting the install AND the close/ignore dialog comes up beforehand. so i just downloaded the warez version and am using that. and it works great.

[Skanky Burns]

A case-study on copy protection.