Trying to get Cossacks:European Wars to work/how do i use ace files

I installed cossacks european wars from the origial disk but it froze at the game screen with the people. No mouse/###board response. I could move the mouse but everything else froze. THe demo works so I figured it might be the cd drive so I tried to download the patch to load the game without a cd. It says apply the patch but I dont know how to apply the patch. Any help on either thanks a lot