Corrupted disc

Have you tried to make a image of the disc? You never know it might make a difference.

I haven't. How would I do that, and how would the install process work?

Download a program called imgburn, or some other software, and then create a image of the CD, then download a virtual drive (I used a program called magicdisc )

Once you created a image of your disc, mount the image to the virtual drive, and it should run as if you used a physical disc.

Oh gotcha. Thanks for the tip, I'll give it a try

No problems. Let me know how it works out for you.

Well I tried to make an image and it immediately failed, saying it has a bad (unrecoverable) sector   I was able to locate an image if the disc on the web so I'm going to see if that works. Thanks again for the help

The game finished installing when I used the image I found online (shows up in start menu, add/remove programs, program files) but FEAR.exe is missing. SO frustrating. Guess I'll just have to purchase another copy  

Get daemon tools or alcohol 120%, And judging by the sounds of it your DVD writer is fussy with discs,lol,If these image burners don't work then you will either have to purchase the instore/online

If you have a friend who owns it, you could install from their discs, using your own code.

Download the game's iso using a torrent and then use your legit cd key.If I remember correct fear doesn't need to verify that your cd is in the drive so you can make a legit copy.

What kind of error do you get when you install your old disc? a file corruption error? or CRC error? Is the old disc already damaged and full of scratch? If its just a little damaged, you can try the toothpaste/peanut butter method of cleaning it..LOL   It does work sometimes..   It worked for me once..

I had the same problem with an Age of Empires 3 disk. It got almost to the end of the install and said it could not read a file. The worst part was that I have both expansions and could not play those either since the original game would not install.
I tried to install the game using CD and DVD drives on several different computers, tried copying the disk, tried burning an image of the disk, and none of it worked.