AOE2 will not install after emulator-help!

[pyag]

Please help. I hope the answer hasn't been posted 1000 times because I couldn't find it after 3 days searching and reading. Yes I am a newbie. I bought AOE2.0a for my toshiba portege 3110ct running windows 98. Stupidly I did not know you needed the original cd in the machine to run the game, I don't have a cd-rom on this machine. However I am networked to a Mac with a Yamaha CRW6416S and I have a compaq pentium at work with a basic cd drive (i don't know brand/model).

I ftped a simple drag and drop copy of the files from the cd to the laptop. I installed AOE2 on the laptop. Got please insert cd error. I don't have a cd-rom on this computer.

I installed paragon cd emulator, daemon tools and then clone cd in an attempt to make this copy mount as a cd. Then I learned about 1 to 1 copying.

I installed clonecd at work, made a 1:1 copy, and ftped it home. I tried using daemon tools and clone-cd to open it at home - no luck. It mounts as a music cd with 2 tracks. I uninstalled everything, AOE2, paragon, daemon-tools, clonecd from the laptop. I reinstalled just daemon-tools and clonecd and I still can't get the 1:1 copy of AOE2 to mount.

Then I learned about no-cd patches. So I tried to reinstall AOE2 from the original drag and drop copy and now it wont install. It goes through the whole install setup and then starts copying files until it is 66% complete and is loading .dll files and it says: "initializing uninstall" and then it says "installation did not complete successfully" I've tried to uninstall again and reinstall. I've searched the microsoft site and have followed their instructions for deleting the Windows\Temp folder and for doing a clean boot. But still no success.

Please help. Something is preventing the AOE2 files from installing and I think it is something to do with the safedisk security. If I could just find out what it is and delete it, I would be eternally grateful. Or could you just turn me on to another game that works without a cd-rom drive.

Paul

PS For all of those people who think you are only helping others to pirate games illegally, I think my post shows that you are also helping people to use the legal copies of games they have purchased. In my case, I think this safedisk crap which is keeping me from using the game I bought should be illegal.