What is this in win98se when installing patches and winamp: "Application is not valid win32 file"?

[mellondust]

I just did a clean install of win98se on an old computer but new hard drive. I can install programs fine, but when i want to install patches or small programs like winamp, it gives me an error and says the exe is not a valid win32 application. What is going on here? I have installed win98 20 times and never had a problem like this. Is this an OS problem or is there something wrong with the files. All the files I have tried that have given me this error I have copied onto a cd from another computer running win98 also. I also have an old cd-rom drive in this computer, could that be the issue?

 

[Gaunt]

Sounds like the files you are trying to run are corrupt somehow... Windows isn't recognizing them as valid win32 applications.

When you copied the files from the other computer onto CD, did you use something like DirectCD? This could cause a problem where the other computer doesn't recognize the formatting of the disc properly, so it can list the files, but can't open them completely.

Also, you mentioned that the drive is an older cd-rom. I've noticed in the past that burnt CDs usually don't work well in old cd-roms. Especially anything less than about 12x seems to be too old. This is just my experience, however. No technical information to back up that claim. It's possible that it can read the disc partially, but not completely so the files are seeming corrupt to the OS.

Depending on how the CD was burnt, try a lower speed (I've noticed this can help sometimes) and make sure you are doing a full burn and closing the session on the CD. Don't use directCD or OnCD to write the CD, otherwise you will probably need software on the other machine to read the CD properly.