Man, making IL-2 work was a bitch.
First, I tried to install it normally. It would run happily about 15% of the way, and then give me an error message in french and freeze. Fortunately I spoke french, and knew that it had to do with trying to call for a nameless file (WTF?). After some toying around, nothing worked, and I started using every EXE file on the disc (there's almost ten of them). One of them was the normal gameplay EXE, which somehow ran the game normally with just the disc files. However, I couldn't save, that being on the disc. So I tried to copy the disc files. THAT didn't work, because before it got to some required files it had a problem installing some BMP texture it said was corrupted. I couldn't find it on the disc, so that may be the no-name file. After a while, I decided to install the game by pulling every file and folder individually onto a directory in my hard drive, except the one folder that had the suspect file. Then I went into THAT folder and grabbed each file.
Now it works.
At this time, I'm just running it without any updates or whatnot. This is an original IL-2 CD. Right out of the box, without launch updates! Just like the old days! EXCITING!
...oh, and I'm now playing. You can watch me crash in takeoff/landing training, or urge me to crash in a more difficult mission if you prefer.