Dennis. When switching to W7 this summer, i found out that UAC was blocking more than i wanted. For new and big installments i turn it off and reboot my pc.
Many of my old games and or mods came back to live after reinstalling them.
On my C drive i've created extra maps for programs,"Program Files Games", "Program Files Div". If an old exe points out to the "Program Files" dir, i point them to "Program Files Div". This made a difference, they worked!. When manualy installing games (non steam). I never put them in the (x86) dir. They can get corrupted before you use them????? . And when installing any prog "exe'. i Right-click on the exe and choose "run as administator". This also made a difference. Sometimes w7 tells me this program is not installed correctly, i tell w7 back that it is correct. It took me more than 2 months to get a grip on my pc.
Hope you can use this info. R-14, Google says 1997. You can try installing it on the way i described it. IF it completes the installment, you can R-click the shortcut or exe, and choose "Properties" on the properties menu you can choose "Compatibility". Here you can put the 'Compatibility mode" on and choose the functioning Windows version for this.
Pardon my English, Because i'm not.