Mass Effect 1 - Installing and Patching on Windows 7 64bit from retail DVD

I can't install ME1 from the disk, I get the saferun.exe/saferun.dll error.  I searched and followed these steps to manually install the game.When trying to run configuration from the launcher, the program crashes. I looked around and found that that's an issue that can be fixed with patching, so I downloaded the 1.02 and 1.01a patches and tried them both. I can't patch - it tells me "Mass Effect is not found. Please reinstall the game from the original source and try again."

Can you help me get this game to install?

 edit: I tried a few other things (XP compatibility mode, making an ISO and running from a virtual drive) and nothing worked. I bought a copy from Steam instead.