Shia Luck wrote...
Ummmm... things you could try:
Make sure you have an administrator account when installing.
Did that. Automatically assumed it's mandatory whenever installing any game.
Try searching the disck and right clicking on the install.exe, then choose run as administrator, compatibility etc as in the wind 7 install thread instructions.
Did that. No such luck. That's how I got the results I described in the initial post.
Copy the contents of the CD to the hard disk and follow the administrator advice above.
Good Luck!
Tried that, and it didn't even get as far as it did when I tried installing from the original DVD. As in, I attempted to launch the installer, and the installer didn't even show up as an active thread in my task manager.