I purchased and loaded this game a couple of years ago, when I still had XP and it ran fine. I started to play it, and then did not continue at that time, for a number of reasons. Quite a while ago, I removed it from my computer. Now I'm trying to re-install it.

Now, my OS is Win7. I read through the topic about Win7 and "older" games, and it appears that Barrow Hill runs fine for people. However, it will not launch the install for me. I put it in the drive, and it doesn't start spinning. If I try to initiate the install manually, I don't hear the drive begin to spin and I just get the Win7 "I'm working on it" icon on my screen, spinning away into perpetuity. I can't even get out of the screen at this point without rebooting my computer.

Any ideas what might be happening or how I could get the install to launch?

Here are my current stats:
OS: Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit (6.1, Build 7601) Service Pack 1
Processor: Intel(R) Celeron(R) CPU G530 @ 2.40GHz (2 CPUs), ~2.4GHz
Memory: 8 gig of RAM
Motherboard: ASUS P8 H61-M LX R2.0 Series
Video Card: AMD Radeon HD 7700 Series
Hard Drive: Western Digital 500 gig
Monitor: Dell 2407WFP (Digital)

First thing I would do is clean the disk and try again. I had a game disk some time ago that acted like this. It didn't show anything on it, but as soon as I cleaned it, the install worked.

Wow, Drac, that has got to be the quickest, easiest "glitch fix" in my 25 years of computer gaming! LOL As absurd as it sounds to clean a clean disk, that worked! Thanks a bunch!

Woo hoo! I remember I thrashed myself to death trying to get this disk to work and finally backed up and started from scratch.

The game is playing fine, but it is behaving in a most curious manner. It left it in the DVD player after downloading it, and it spools up every time I launch the computer, whether or not I ask to start the game. Not slow about it, either. I was starting to wonder if I need to have the disk in the drive for it to play, or if I would be better off taking it out?

Then my computer crashed with a Device Driver Failure two days ago when I started up. Hours later, after trouble-shooting the mouse and keyboard, which both became unresponsive, I could not even try to reload Windows (a common fix for these Ghost-in-the-Machine moments). I finally had to take it to the IT doctor. I have everything backed up and have a backup computer also, so no biggee except whatever they'll charge me for trouble-shooting it, but now I am wondering if it set off this cascade of events?

I'd take the disc out when not using it. Then you can try starting the game without it. I don't remember whether you need the disc in the drive for the disc check.

I used to leave discs in the drive back when I had Windows 98. But it seems to cause trouble with Windows Vista, 7, and 8. All that thrashing around. Maybe it's related to antivirus and how they want to scan everything you're doing now.


I wouldn't blame the DVD itself. The drive may have been on the way out, and the extra work pushed it over the edge. But that's a guess. The repairman may be able to tell you more.

Did you get the disc out before sending the computer to the doctor?

Yes, I did remove the game disk before taking the computer in. I got my computer back an hour ago, and the IT doctor said none of the problems arose for him, during his bench test. He let the computer run overnight and nothing untoward happened. Nothing in diagnostics. However, he was not using my keyboard nor Logitech mouse for his test run, and I do not know if he tried to run a disk in the DVD drive, so I am not sanguine that things are fine at this point. Guess I'll just have to wait and see what happens when I plug my stuff back into the box. If things are still t*ts up, I'll re-install Windows first. If that doesn't do it, it has to be hardware, right?

In any case, I definitely will not start up the computer with the game disk in the drive from here on.

Computers. Humph!

If it has trouble with the Barrow Hill DVD, see if it can read different DVD's.

Yes, definitely. Thanks! It is all spooky because the first thing that failed was the mouse. I thought the battery might be dead, but it wasn't that. Then the keyboard stopped responding. (shakes head)

Computers can be weird.

Now THAT is the first hearty laugh I've had today, Jenny. Thanks for that.

I've also been enduring a great deal of frustration today while trying to buy a Rail Pass from the Swiss Rail site and to determine why one of their pages says the tickets I want are for sale but when I go to verify this, another page says "no connections are available on that date." Ridiculous. "Swiss Efficiency" just became an oxymoron.