Trying to get game working on my new computer, i have the gold edition cd's and twilight of the arnor cd's.

First off, trying to install with cd's.  Auto run on dark avatar will not work, immediatly gives a critical error.  Work around i just explore the cd and go to setup, and it installs.  Which opens up the real problems. Desktop shortcut to orignal gal civ 2 works, but one to dark avatar tells me to put in my cd and run setup or download off of stardock.  If i manually go and open the application for dark avatar it will open and run fine.

Now the bigger problem, when i install twilight of the arnor and start it up, i get to see the opening movie, and then 100% i instantly crash.  I have gone through all of the lists to fix this, such as up to date drivers, desktop resolution high enough, etc., no dice, instantly crash on opening game every time.  Can this problem be associated with the fact my computer apparantly doesnt think dark avatar is even installed?

Backup plan became to just download all 3 games off of impulse.  However, this lead to the exact same problem.  Even with it downloading the newwest version of dark avatar, i cant even use the start menu shortcut to load dark avatar, it tells me to insert my cd and run setup, or download through stardock.

Sorry if the answer might be right in front of me some where on boards, i tried to search, but right now im in a kind of haze of frustration about it. :/

edit:  Also to note, after installing the game impulse has a button that changes from "install", to "run".  Even if i use impulse to install it and i hit the "run" button, it tells me to insert my cd and run setup or download using stardock..