Friend's game won't start up correctly...

So my friend just got the game(on steam) and we are trying to set his ES Online up. Thing is, he can only run Asian Dynasties and the War Chiefs and not the original game. He still has to put the CD key in(done when launching the original game), but is not able to reach that point since the game crashes before then. We cannot make him an account to play on Asian Dynasties with us, and have gone through a couple fixes online that haven't work. It has apparently happened to a lot of people, so if you have fixes please share them.