Greetings everyone.
I've been trying this trick to install the game on a Win2k running machine, and failed.
First, when I look for setup.exe on my AoE3 CD, I can't find any. In fact, on my copy, the game installation is never launched through this file, but rather via the file install.exe (which is the file the autorun uses too). I'm not sure why it is so, as I've seen elsewhere on the web this setup.exe file mentionned, and even in the readme file on the AoE3 CD. I don't know if it makes any kind of difference but I have the collector edition.
Anyway, I tried the procedure described above, replacing setup.exe with install.exe, and the installation began, although I couldn't see any progress bar like I can see when I install the game on XP.
Before the installation is complete, it normally asks you to put back CD1 in the drive before finalizing. Here, it didn't ask for that and said the installation was complete after CD3. However, there wasn't any registry entry created for it, nor where there any command group in the Start menu.
When I look at the directory I asked it to install the game, I do not see the usual files. Instead, there are two directories: one Age of Empires III directory which holds the same files as those you would have if you had proceeded with the classical XP installation, the other one is named System and contains other files. With those two directories is there also the Age of Empires III.msi file.
The game won't run when I launch the .exe file. I get an error message saying MSXML4.0 has not been installed correctly and that the game needs it to run.
Can anyone help me? I've tried several things since, but I'm lost now.