Civilization 4 error

[Alpha_Blue]

I used Alcohol 120 to make a mds backup of Civilization 4 DVD which apparently has SafeDisc 4.60.00 according to your database, but after creating the image it didnt work, cause the game said there was no CD in the drive or something..I was wondering if u guys know why its not working..like, what settings should I enable to make it work? With DVD's the version of alcohol I have only lets me skip reading errors and seperate the file into up to 4 gb (or not at all)- it doesnt have the database type options, or DPM, and read speed is greyed out at maximum..not so many options for DVD i guess..

O and also I created an image for the original Command and Conquer but it doesnt work, and I think its cause its so old of a game, no protection scanners can even figure out what protection it uses, but after i mount the image with alcohol it wont even work, it says no disc in drive. I know this is a daemon tools forum but the alcohol forum apparently doesnt allow anyoe to ask questions cause all there are are stikies of info and i have never seen anyone posting a topic there. So this is why i am asking here.

[Jito463]

Anyone can post in the Trial Users support forum. Just post with a System Report from within Alcohol. You don't need to register.

If you're a licensed customer of Alcohol, you need to e-mail support_team@alcohol-soft.com. The subject line should say Purchased User and the message should just have your desired username on the forum and the email address you used when you purchased alcohol. You will receive notification once your access to the Purchased Users Forum is approved.

[evlncrn8]

im pretty sure command and conquer is safedisc, command and conquer 3 though is securom...

[Alpha_Blue]

Well apparently Civ 4 uses the newer version of safedisc 4.x so I used this program to cloak the drives; it works for securom 7/safedisc 4 so i think im good with that. Its just a bit of an extra step to have that running additionally with alcohol but whatever. At least it works .

As for the original C&C, this is a problem that continuously stumps me...ive scanned the exe file with numerous protection scanners...and none of them have found anything on it, also, it doesnt help that most of them only scan PE/MZ files which apparently this exe is not because its so old. I'm sure the copy protection itself isnt advanced, the problem is that its so old that most programs probably dont have options for things that old to emulate protections. Its so old I cant find any thing on google talking of it. Heh. Well if someone could find out what it uses please please let me know. That is the only game I have that I cannot figure out how it works. Thanks.

[Kinlaadare]

Just to remind that executable don't always have .exe extentions. In the case of C&C3, this is a .dat file.

[Ratha]

The original command and conquer came on 2 cds, and was a dos game. I think the only protection it had was basic cd checking. I believe thats accurate anyway.

They did a remake and released it as C&C Gold or something like that which was updated to be win95 compatible. Ive got the cd of the dos version here and would be willing to try imaging it a bit later to see if i have the same problem. Can you tell me what profile you are trying to use in alcohol?

A-Ray Scanner does not detect any protection on the uninstalled game, ill install it a bit later and see if it can find any protection on the files in the game dir.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command_&_Conquer - The win95 version had internet play.

[Alpha_Blue]

I have the original one, I think...well, it came with 2 disks and it was DOS partially..I dunno what profile I used with ALcohol, i forget..but i dont think it matters..i doubt it would work anyways. course i am not sure ...well if u can figure it out plz let me know..cause i can read wikipedia but that still doesnt help me get the image working. Thanks though..yeah i already scannned with a million protection scanners none of which detected anything, and if its just a CD check, (simple one) doesnt matter how simpel it is, i still am too simple minded to know how to emulate that
unless someone here knows

[Ratha]

Ive not had a chance to try it yet, either running the game, or ripping it, however you could try a generic protected cd protection in alcohol when ripping it.

Also, you may want to try mounting it in the lowest cdrom drive, its possible that it only checks one drive for the cd. Also we should ask, does it still ask you for a cd when you put the cd in one of your cdrom devices? Try putting the cd into each cdrom you have, see if it loads or not.

WinXP also seems to give some strange issues regarding game protections, ive had a game tell me to insert the cd, even when i have the physical cd in the drive (worms world party) damn thing wont play properly till i patch it with the europen patch (its an american version of the game)

Ill get around to ripping and testing it in a day or two, ive got some other projects going on at the moment, and my test system isnt setup just yet, dont even have alcohol installed yet on it so i cant tell ya what profile to try and use.

With the images you've tried to make, have you tried turning emulation on just to see what happens? If you are really desperate, you might also try daemon tools 3.47. Some of the clonecd images ive ripped work with DT 3.47 but do not work with 4.08, just something to think about. Turning emulation in 4.08 makes em work though.

[MaLing]

I strongly believe there is no protection scheme in Command And Conquer I, you can even just copy all the files in the discs to hard disc drive, and then use Nero to record them on CDRs, so just use 'Normal CD' profile in Alcohol to make images of them.

However, that is a Dos game, you may have problems running it in command prompt in Windows XP.

In general, I do not think that there is a meaning of prodcuing images of Dos games: Where do you find a virtual drive programme running in Dos?

[Jito463]

There is a patch for C&C that makes it compatible with Win95, and using the Compatibility mode can be made to work with XP. I plan later to see if that same method can be applied to make it compatible with XP x64, since I got it free with my C&C3 preorder.

[MaLing]

Ah, Jito... Command And Conquer I was a product of Westwood, which I think is no more alive...but you could still manage to get a patch for it...?

[Jito463]

They're not around technically, but EA owns it and put the patch up. It was on the card inside the preorder box.

ftp://ftp.westwood.com/pub/ccgold/

Works for the DVD version in the box, anyway. Might work for the original.

[MaLing]

Thanks for the link Jito.

[NewDemon]

Well apparently Civ 4 uses the newer version of safedisc 4.x so I used this program to cloak the drives; it works for securom 7/safedisc 4 so i think im good with that. Its just a bit of an extra step to have that running additionally with alcohol but whatever. At least it works .
As for the original C&C, this is a problem that continuously stumps me...ive scanned the exe file with numerous protection scanners...and none of them have found anything on it, also, it doesnt help that most of them only scan PE/MZ files which apparently this exe is not because its so old. I'm sure the copy protection itself isnt advanced, the problem is that its so old that most programs probably dont have options for things that old to emulate protections. Its so old I cant find any thing on google talking of it. Heh. Well if someone could find out what it uses please please let me know. That is the only game I have that I cannot figure out how it works. Thanks.

What program did you use to hide Safedisc 4 ?.

[Jito463]

Correction, the version of C&C in the preorder box was two CD's, not DVD. I can't believe I posted that...