Shadows of Amn and Windows 10

[grogerson]

I have a problem with the DVD edition of Shadows of Amn, from the Baldur's Gate 4-in-1 box set. I was able to install it once, but since it required the DVD to be in the drive I uninstalled it, copied the disk to my hard drive and tried to install from there. Now I can neither install or uninstall the game, but get a message:

"An installation support file could not be installed. Catastrophic failure."

When I try again I get the message:

"The InstallShield Engine (iKernel.exe) could not be installed. IKernel.exe could not be copied to C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\InstallShield\Engine\6\Intel 32'. Make sure that you have the appropriate privileges to copy this file to this folder. (0x20)"

The game disk has an iKernel.ex_ file, and the indicated Intel 32 folder had an iKernel.exe file. Could someone give me an idea what's going on, and how to fix it? I'm trying to check out separate installations of SoA, SoA-ToB and BG2EE.

[Senka]

1. Do not install any old games in Program Files! Create another directory, use another disk and install it there. 

2. Try GOG-version. 

[Jarno Mikkola]

Or if you use the C drive, understand that you need to install games you intend to modify to a folder you have a write over permission... aka, in to your Windows Login profile files, in the Users folder... aka here: C:\Users\<username>\Games\ ... the Games subfolder, of course, can be whatever... but that's the only directory you have by default a re-write permission, in the C drive, if that's your Windows install drive.

And by modifying, I also mean games you intend to install official patches t00.

Macrohard Wormdoor indeed.

Edited June 28, 2019 by Jarno Mikkola

[grogerson]

Sorry, I should have also added that I'm trying to install from C:\Games\BG2_DVD to C:\Games\SoA. I stay away from any folders named \Programs or \Program Files. I've had no trouble installing or modding in C:\Games until now. And only with the SoA reinstallation. I will, however, check the Windows Login status.

[Jarno Mikkola]

5 hours ago, grogerson said:

Sorry, I should have also added that ... to C:\Games\SoA*. ... I've had no trouble installing or modding in C:\Games until now. And only with the SoA reinstallation. I will, however, check the Windows Login status.

 

This*, is not enough anymore, as the re-written files are actually copied to your profile files, but if you don't use the profile files as the base folder, they are invisible to the all old games, such as BG2, because they were not licensed for full Windows 10 support during development, cause it was 20 years ago, and nobody would have known to license games this far into the future, or in what form that would need to be done in. 

If memory serves, when the files rewritten they won't be overwritten, but they'll be written into the C:\Users\<username>\AppData\ -folders. And you can't see that by default because it's hidden, in the folder options. To access it, you just need to edit the folder options... but that won't touch the actual game.

Where the game is installed from doesn't affect the result. In such. GOG provides different options for different content... which does effect result, but so do all the other providers. Aka you can get a BG2EE and nonEE versions from them... but the suppose was that we are talking about a DVD image... in most cases, a .iso, a .mds or a .cue  -file, which doesn't involve repurchase, unlike Senka's suggestion most likely would.

[grogerson]

My ToB installation is from GoG, so no DRM. I also have BG2EE from Beamdog. No problems with either in C:\Games. I've checked out C:\Users\<username>\AppData\(Local, LocalLow and Roaming folders) for anything other than Beamdog games, and nothing shows. Going from XP (desktop PC) to 10 (laptop) is a bit of a jump, and this is where my problems seem to begin. I can neither install nor uninstall SoA from DVD or hard drive without the flags noted in the opening post. Is there somewhere else I can look, or something I can do, to rectify this issue?

Edit: Also, where can I check the system registry and perhaps delete the SoA game from the system? I can't do it from the Control Panel\Programs and Features section. All I get is the catastrophic failure message.

Edited June 29, 2019 by grogerson