Vista - Games wont open

I have problems with two games that both worked fine at one point and now
refuse to open. The games in question are Civilization IV and Warhammer Mark
of Chaos. I don't get error messages or anything when I try to start the
games, I just get no response from the computer at all. I double click on
the shortcut and nothing happens. The pointer goes to a circle for a few
seconds and then it's back to before like nothing happened. I tried to
launch from the program file and still nothing. I tried to uninstall and
reinstall and that did not help.