Your feedback is greatly appreciated
I tried using the same directory and drive letter as you have and it worked fine. Anyway, if you want the issue fixed then please do the following 3 tests for me and post your results.
1. Click windows start button. select run from the menu option. in the requester, type cmd and hit return. Does this open a DOS command prompt?
2. Also, are you running XP Pro or XP Home?
3. Mount your disc, run soapatcher again and after it quits with no DOS window browse to the soapatcher cfg drawer. You should find a run.bat file there. Upload your run.bat file for me to check. If you can't find run.bat in the cfg drawer AFTER running SOAPatcher, I need to know this, as it may be related to the method I am using to create the run.bat file.
By doing these tests and replying with the results, I will have a fair idea what the problem is, and can then proceed to fix it in version 1.2
At the moment, you are the only person who has had any problem, so you are the only one who can do the tests and answer the questions. Without these answers, I can't and won't attempt to fix your problem.
Also, you should not need to create the c:\soatp folder because the program does this for you. It won't affect anything if you do though.
In the meantime, a way around the problem is to SOAPatcher your cdi on someone else's PC, and then copy the patched cdi over to your PC. You'll have to compress the image file, to fit it on a CD. Uncompressed it's about 760MB, but compressed its only around 440MB.
Like you say, strange that this is happening. I've done it like a trillion times and it has never failed. Please get back, because I need to sort this last minor issue out...