I tried it again, this time on another computer. Even without ScummVM, I get the same message. This time the message is in a colored low resolution text bubble in a full screen mode.
I also tried it with DOSBox, a program I just found. That did the same thing listed above.
Floppy disks are notoriously faulty and they could be the root of the problem. However, it installs without any error messages or strange disk noises. If this is the problem, what can I do?