LOTR Battle For Middle Earth 2

iv managed to do it now. thank you to whoever came up with that solution. been trying for days to do that. you are my hero lol

Hopefully someone will see this and be able to help since it's an older thread. I am having the same problem as many others have had with this game and compatibility with Win 7 (32 in my case). Anyway, I installed it last week and it would crash in the splash screen. After doing a little research I found a patch and a YT video that shows how to install it:

How to make LOTR BFME 2 work with Windows 7 HD - YouTube

I installed the patch and the game fired up for me, but after a few minutes into the game every good character and building in Rivendell up and dies. After doing some more research it appears this happens when the PC recognizes the game as a copy (mine is not - I recently won an eBay auction from a reputable seller and it came with the original box, all discs, Keyboard card, manual with Keygen on the back). Anyway, when I try the above instructions I am stuck because on my machine there is already an options.ini file. within it all these values:

AudioLOD = High
HasSeenLogoMovies = yes
IdealStaticGameLOD = High
Resolution = 1024 768
StaticGameLOD = High
TimesInGame = 5

(and several more are present) match the above except
mine says TimesInGame = 6 instead of TimesInGame= 5. I changed it and that didn't work. I tried a new .ini file and I couldn't replace the first. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Here is what is in the options.ini folder that is already present:

FlashTutorial = 0
GameSpyIPAddress = 192.168.1.2
HasSeenLogoMovies = yes
IdealStaticGameLOD = High
MovieVolume = 70.000000
MusicVolume = 70.000000
Resolution = 1280 960
SFXVolume = 70.000000
ScrollFactor = 50
SendDelay = no
StaticGameLOD = UltraHigh
TimesInGame = 6
UseEAX3 = no
VoiceVolume = 70.000000

Thank you for any help.