Vista - Age of empires..

I have just recently installed aoe2 conq expansion, and I am trying to play it online again. But I need to update the game, and everytime I attempt to do it, it tells me I do not have the retail copy of the game installed, yet i have the discs sitting infront of me.

I have tried running the patch in administrative rights, and tried running it under windows xp sp2 installation type, neither have worked. I have reinstalled the game multiple times, with no success. Can someone please help meh?

I wouldn't classify this as being a windows problem. If you are 100% you typed the serial key in correctly this may be one of the possible issues:

What often happens with games like Age of Empires is that "crackers" or people looking to play these games for free create "serial gens". When the company picks up on serial numbers they believe to have come from a keygen, they often blacklist them, which consequently ends up denying the illegals users when they try to Update the game. You key might have been part of the algorithm from a keygen, thus blacklisted.

This may or may not be the case for you, but I see that as the only possible reason at this point.

Hope this helped,

I purchased my game from the store..

And I never enterd in a CD key when I installed the game.

How long ago was it purchased? Have you tried Age of Empires support forums yet?

It was only a few weeks ago.