OK this is wierd. I am running it on my home pc and my laptop whicg are both running Win2k. I did not have this problem with either of them. Also look at
http://www.godgames.com/games/darkstone/ this should help some. Also make sure you are running the latest version of Direct X and have the nerwsest drivers for your video and sound cards. Are you running any burning software on your PC? Easy CD Creator sometimes gives me problems with detecting the cd in the drive. This is going to sound weird. You might want to put the cd in the drive go into windows explorer by right clicking on my computer and picking explore. From there click the little plus next to your cd rom drive and you should see an install directory click on it and then double click on setup. Let me know if this helps.