The Official Zoo Tycoon Forum

Alright, so I installed Zoo Tycoon II: Zookeeper Collection and the Endangered species expansion pack and the download animal thing (adding the Ibex or something). It gave me an error message when I tried running Endangered species so I figured I had a bad install. I uninstalled Endangered species, then the Zookeeper collection. So now I want to install everything again.

Now here's the kicker. Whenever I hit the "Install" button on the autorun of Zoo Tycoon II, the installer starts up and I'm told that it's going to uninstall the game and asks me if I want to keep my savegames and downloaded content. Well, the trouble is, it's ALREADY uninstalled. So I hit yes figuring it missed something the first time around and it instantly tells me setup is finished. So I try installing again... only to be told again that I need to uninstall the game.

So how to I let my computer know that Zoo Tycoon II already IS uninstalled? Is there some way to force it to install rather than running the installer first? Is there some registry key I have to delete? There's nothing in the Program Files folder, and I can't find anything related to Zoo Tycoon II on my hard drive. Any help would be greatly obliged.

Oh, and I'm running Windows XP SP2.

oh, that happened to me. In the instruction book that came with zookeeper collection, at the back is technical support. Have one of your parents call it and they'll figure it out. You'll be playing in no time!

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thx tigergirl!u rock!

I don't suppose that you remember what was done to fix the problem. I don't have the manual handy, but I found info on Microsoft's support website on how to contact them. Supposedly, to phone Microsoft, it's free for unlimited support, but it seems to me like they might charge you $35 anyway, which I'd much rather not do. So if you or anybody else might know the steps anyway, then I won't have to take the risk.

Oh, and I'm over 18. No need for my folks to call on my behalf :-)

Alright, I figured out my own solution to the problem. After doing some research online, I found a person who had this issue. He used Regedit (go to the "Run" option in your Start menu and type in "Regedit"), backed up the Registry, then searched for all instances of "tycoon" (note, if you have other games, like Railroad Tycoon, installed, you might be better off searching for "Zoo." If you have Zoo Tycoon 1 installed, you'll just have to be careful with what you delete). If there were other files in the directory that the match was in, I deleted the whole directory. There was one in particular that had loads of stuff in it about versions and stuff. I'm pretty sure that was the culprit.

When I went through the entire thing (it took quite a while), I tried installing again. This time, it worked! Now I'm happily building zoos. Thanks!

I was having the same problem, so I followed your advice and deleted everything (the registry informed me several times that nothing with tycoon was left in the registry), but it's still refusing to install. Was there any other aspect that you didn't record here, or is there any other advice anyone can give me?

One odd thing I noticed about Regedit is that if it gets to the end of the directory when it searches, it doesn't start at the beginning. I missed a few entries the first time around by this. Scroll to the very top of the list and click on the first entry. Then start hitting F3 (key for Find Again).

There was one item which I think may have been the culprit. I don't recall the name, but it was an entry that was in a folder of maybe 20 other items. I selected the whole folder in the left column and then deleted the whole thing.

When you're at the end, it wouldn't be a bad thing to start over and run through the registry again. Like I said, it took me a few tries before I finally got everything cleared out. Best of luck to you.

Yep, i did EVERYTHING registry program files an' all, we called tech support (me and my dad did) they said we had to rename a installshield file, sure shootin it installed right and it worked. now i have to figure a way to get xp to install on a virtual machine on my linux box, i have no cd key for it :(( once xp works on there i will work on mega manual, then probably install vista as my primary os - home premium edition :) Peace Out

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Farewell to everyone. And the forums!