My Adventures with Faulty Game Installations

Part 1: http://www.steamgifts.com/forum/L6f8a/my-adventures-with-faulty-physical-game-disks

After getting little sleep, I wake up early. I really want to play this game, I AM FROGGING DETERMINED YE TWATS. I grab the game disk and invade my parents computer; they aren't home. I put the disk in. No strange noises from the disk drive, and reading the disk doesn't seem slow. The installation even starts fine.

Was my computer playing games with me this whole time...?

Time to clean the disk with a nuke that is fog and my shirt. Move my two desktops around to open up my main one. Replug the SATA cables that go into the disk drive. Close 'er up, turn 'er on. Windows, load faster darn you... There we go. Okay, let's put the disk in... Ah. Aaaaah. Yeah, there's the crying disk drive again. Hmmm, yeah. Disk reading is still slow. Installation still hangs. I'm done. Time to give in. Obtain a 1:1 ISO of a retail disk. Mount it. Alright, 'disk' reading is much faster now-- Hang on a minute. The installation is stopping at the same exact spot as my actual disk does. Hrmm...

Search around the internet for something not related to PHYSX. Some people describe a similar problem. Solution: Turn Windows Firewall on. Problem: Firewall already is on. Let's try running the installer in compatibility mode. Oh, gives me an error of already having an installer running; that sucks. Click cancel... It's telling me installation finishes successfully; you're strange. Let's try running a different executable on the 'disk' in compatibility mode. Nope, still throws the "Another installer is already running" error at me. I click cancel. Oh, that's great. Installer won't close. Time to open Task Manager

I look at "Computer" an hour or two later, while eating lunch. Hey... I'm missing a lot of space. Let's check Program Files-- Airborne files are here. Strange... Run the 1.2 and 1.3 patches. Apply the no-cd crack.

This can't possibly work, the installation was obvious borked-- What...? The game launched? Alright, alright. This is just the menu, of course a few files might get this far. Let's start a new campaign... No way... You're kidding me. I AM A MAN SKYDIVING OUT OF A [redacted] PLANE-- Yeah, the game works.