Ok so what can someone help me out with this problem?
I have starcraft and broodwar installed on my computer, and have had the there for years, but it has been many (like 6) months since I've played them. Now, I lost my brood war disk. So i can't play brood war but I can still play normal Starcraft.
So I went to bestbuy and bought a whole new battle chest. But now for somereason, when I try to install the new battlechest, it wont work. Can anyone help me out with a why and how I can fix it?

It gives me the datafile error and says:
Starcraft is unable to read a required file. Your Starcraft CD may not be in the CD Rom drive. Please ensure that the starcraft disk is in the CD ROM drive and press OK. To leave the program, press EXIT.

Help anyone!?

-$

What part of the installation does this occur? Or is this when you're trying to play it? You could have also used a virtual cd-drive and just mounted a starcraft iso and installed it that way too. the only unique thing you need is a cd-key.

Well, I put in the disk, and it comes up with a screen that says:
-Play StarCraft
-Tech Support
-Exit Installer

I press "Play StarCraft" and the above error comes up. I'm thinking that it might be because I already have starcraft installed on my computer, I just lost the brood war cd. Now however, I'm putting in an entirley new cd with a different cd key. So maybe it's getting confused?

Wait so you've already installed brood war, and when you put in the brood war CD, this is the error you get? I used to get this alot, it might be because your cd-drive can't read the Starcraft disk for some reason or other.

I would use battlenet accounts. You just need a CD key and it will let you download SC BW and play it without a CD.

Yeah, for some reason, my computer takes like 5 minutes to run brood war. Are you sure the disc is running before you hit play starcraft?

Also, an alternate to this would be to just open the disc and copy INSTALL.EXE. Then, paste it in your starcraft directory and rename it to BroodWar.mpq (make sure you have "Hide Extensions for known file types" unchecked [Tools >> Folder Options >> View]). Now, you can play brood war without the disc.

ok, i think you are all missunderstanding me. So I am going to try to say this again.
-I have installed StarCraft and BroodWar onto my computer years ago
-I played Broodwar many times, years ago.
-I have returned and am trying to play Broodwar again.
-Alas, I have lost my Broodwar disk
-I can not play broodwar
-I go buy another battlechest (so this makes it so I now have 2 Starcraft 1 disks and 1 brood war disk, becuase i lost 1 brood war disk and i just baught another one to replace it)
-I insert my new starcraft disk that I just bought
-I try to install the new starcraft disk that I just bought
-When I try to install it, the above error comes to me

Oh it happens when you try to INSTALL it! Why don't you just uninstall your old one, then reinstall the new one?

You are trying to install broodwars when it is already installed.

Backup Maps and required files, and re-install.

Take the thing back to bestbuy and use the blizzard store next time Its free

Sounds as tho you have missing data in your original installation. Uninstall SC using the options tab at the Blizzard Menu screen when you put your disk in. After uninstalling, you might even want to delete your Starcraft folder as you may have a bogus install.exe or other files lurking around. (obviously back up any of your desired map folders etc.) With a clean slate, I'd be willing to bet you have no problems installing. And be sure to copy your install.exe from your Broodwar CD as per Blizzard's 1.15.2 no-cd instructions.

That.

Unistall, reinstall, try.
a) Win > Go to 1
b) Fail > Go to 2

1) Win!
2) Make an ISO image.