Kursk 1943 failed installation and virus

[rbbane]

Thought I'd give Kursk1943 another go and bought another new copy from PC World.
This time they'd reduced the price to £1.97 !! while Africa1943 was £15, I think.

This time I disabled AVG antivirus, and also altered it's settings to not automatically remove suspect files.

Installation went through faultlessly, right through to the end of installing DirectX. (There is no option for not installing this, even though I already have latest version of Direct X installed), (9c).
Then just when it seems as if installation is complete, up comes the error message again of "Options failed to initialise properly".

(I think that options must be the first thing that the game looks at when starting).

On opening the installed game folder and trying to activate any of the exe. files, including the Kursk exe. file, all give the same error message "failed to initialise properly".

And again, at no time did the installation ask for the unique serial key that is on the front of the manual.

Not bothered about the money, especially at only £1.97. Would just like the chance of playing the game, as the demo looks so interesting.

Does this look like a faulty batch of discs, together with PC World reducing the game to almost nothing, (in an effort to get rid of them??)!