Install problems (using Windows XP)

[Nos]

For some reason, all of a sudden, Windows XP has decided it won't let me install certain things.

For example, I was reinstalling the fantastic RTS game Total Annihiliation and one of it's expansion packs, the game installed fine, but when I tried to instal the expansion pack Windows popped up the following message.

'C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\AUTOEXEC.NT. The system file is not suitable for running MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows applications. Choose 'Close' to terminate the application.'

The pop up box gives me the options of 'Close' or 'Ignore', both of which appear to do the same thing and close the pop up box and the installation of the program.

Originally I thought it was down to just this one thing, but today I bought a new printer, an Epson R300 photo jobbie.

When trying to install the drivers and the printer management software I got the same message, I managed to install the drivers by using the .inf file but I'm still unable to install the printer management software.

Any ideas?!

 

[Shovel]

Very odd... you're definatley using the XP/NT installer, rather than a 9x one?

Total Annihiliation: Try bring up the properties for the setup.exe file and choosing Windows 98 compatibility mode. Bit odd that the behavior has changed, but worth a shot.

Drivers: Have you tried downloaded the latest Epson drivers from their website? At least from there you can be 100% sure you're downloading them for XP.

If you are sure that it's XP executables that're being run then I'm afraid I'm out of advice... Could be worth peering at the contents of autoexec.nt (it'll be a text file), but I don't think I've ever come across what it is actually for (might be some form of startup settings).

 

[Nos]

I got the latest drivers off the Epson site, same problem tho :/

Tried the different compat modes as well, but to no avail.

Also, the autoexec.nt file does not exist on my computer, but a quick google suggests that this file is in someway linked to ntdetect.com, anyone know what this file does? Seems to be a core XP file...