3.5 disk DOS problem

I have a game that's installed through 3.5 floppy disks. (What? It's Wing Commander: Privateer. IT'S COOL!) I'll put disk 1 in, take my computer into MSDOS prompt, put it into A drive and type install, but it tells me that's an invalid command for that prompt. It doesn't make any sense cause that's how the game is installed :( What do I do?

Are you running XP?

Is it install.bat or install.exe or install.com?

If you want to play DOS games, you could try DOSBox. http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/

I'm running XP.

The installing instructions say to just type install, but looking through the disk it's a .exe file. A:/install.exe doesn't work either.

Try DOSbox. XP's command line is pretty bad about backwards compatibility.

Okay :(

EDIT: I mounted a drive, went to install and it closed itself out so I'm guessing it came across an error.