I can't even run Emperor: Battle for Dune - HELP!

[whiskeykid]

I also got prob playing emperor - bought , played got hooked . upgraded comp: and boot back to desktop every time untill forgot to install AGP drivers for m-board -then played well but frame-rate was poor. install agp driver and I see the menu but it kicks me back to desktop AGAIN! CD rom don't matter , even sony dvd burner won't play as cd rom- went to friend , installed copy of xp corp fresh, new GE-force TI 4200 and all drivers updated . low and behold it would play even on a clone cd copy. but on his rig it plays only 20 minutes or so and crashes.Older asus board and 750 amd t-bird proc .
I was running win xp home with all updates and 512 meg ddr , n-force m-board, 1800 proc. even patched from official site before they gave up the ghost. still no go . seems to run better on older systems but can't get it to run even with the compatability tab set to [95] [98] any thoughts? I was able to play this disk on older system but it is no longer available.
any and all help appreciated ---------------D