RA2, Alice, Undying (I think), and some others have safeDisc2 protection. Lots of drives will read to an image file ok, but not many will correctly burn the image to a blank cd. Often you can use a fixed game.exe, but in the case of RA2, the setup.exe is also protected by SD2 (ouch!) therefore it won't install.

You need to find out if your reader/burner is compatible with cloneCD (it writes in dao/raw.) A few plextors and some phillips and HP's will do the job. Sometimes though, you don't really know what the drive actually is because manufacturers use one anothers hardware.