[Wine] New User General Fail

[trialbyfile]

I've just converted to Linux, so I'm not really up to speed on anything.  Just putting that out there.  I've tried to install a couple different Windows games in Wine with the same effect.  Wine runs the installer just fine and adds the program to its 'Programs' list in the Application toolbar (Ubuntu Hardy, btw).  When I try to run anything off this list, I get a little Wine icon in the taskbar, and the cursor goes to an hourglass for a few, then it closes out.  This is even for, say, text readme's, however Notepad, which came already installed in Wine, works just fine.  I didn't run from the command prompt because I couldn't find any exe file made by the installer.  I did explore the "C;" drive in Wine and found the directory for one of the games in the "Program Files" directory, however it seems to only consist of empty files, which I would guess is the problem.  I tried the autorun.exe file in the mounted CD directory and it brought back up the installer, but no option to launch the program.  Wine version is 1.0.0.  Any help would be awesome, I read the FAQ and manual but didn't see any troubleshooting tips for something like this.