The BF2142 discs are utter crap.  They cause issues for a lot of people.  When I have my 2142 disc in, it likes to make my PC "lose" the DVD Drive it's sitting in.

Try restarting your PC, or trying again in a few days.  If all else fails, use a torrent to download a virtual image of the disc (You have a legit copy infront of you, the image is essentially for "backup" purposes making downloading it shifty, but not illegal), mount it to a virtual drive and install it from there.

Or, just try running setup.exe in WinXP mode.  That probably won't work though.

Your problem is you are running Vista.

Ok ok, seriously. Go to control panel and security settings, you need to turn off user account control. Restart.

Check to make sure NO bf2142 files have managed to install themselves, go to program files Electronic Arts and make sure there is no entry for 2142. If there is, remove it.

Insert the 2142 cd (and make sure it is clean! A dirty, scratched or worse, cracked disk will throw up all sorts of errors.), it should autorun and bring up the usual install menu. If it doesnt then explore the disk and double click autoplay. It should then bring up the menu, install should then hopefully progress as normal but you may get a compatability error, just click ok to run in compatability mode OR, when you explore the disk rightclick on autorun and select run in compatability mode for win xp sp2.

Bite my shiny metal Tie Fighter!

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/wind … -on-or-off

Bite my shiny metal Tie Fighter!