Made an attempt at all three with no change in the game. I even took one of EA's ideas and copied the files to my computer to run them from there, but once you get past the language chooser and the info box about the game saving in a different location than before, it asks for Disk 1 and neither the copied one or the original will satisfy.

are you useing a user account to log on with your laptop that you can change through control panal? if so check you are a computer administrator. other wise the only thing i can think of as all else seems to failed is to use system restore and set the pc back to when you had no problems.

That sounded like a great idea, but for one reason or another, my computer will not let me restore at all.

did you get any error message?
and have you the admin settings correct on your pc?

also check this link:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/302...=1&PA=1&SD=HSCH

I got the "The system cannot restore to such-and-such point. Please try another point." I tried five different dates, and still same result. I will try the method from microsoft and let you know.

Still nothing from the Microsoft Method.

sounds like there may be a serious problem other than the installation problem. could well be a corrupted file of some kind. perhaps even a virus lurking somewhere.
so it leaves only 4 choices
1 virus scan & check for spyware
2 take it to a shop
3 reinstall windows
4 or try any recovery software supplied with the pc

Would it matter that I don't a patch installed on my Original game? Cause I don't.

No. This is a problem of your drive not reading the discs. Try exchanging the discs you got for new copies.

I'm going home this weekend and I should be able to exchange them then. Thanks for all of y'alls help, even if it didn't work. :-) I <3 MTS2!

Swapped the game and am now playing happily away! Thanks again for y'alls help!