Diablo 2 LoD Expansion - Possible DT Bug?

[Ratha]

Ive observed some *very* odd behavior in daemon tools 4.08 HE compared to the last time i tried to run Diablo 2 LOD (1.11b) in win98 with version 3.47.

I havnt played diablo since i moved from win98 to winxp, which has only been about 6-9 months now. Anyway im having a really bizzare issue. It installs fine, but asks for a cd when i play. (classic problem i know, but please keep reading)

I made a cd image of all four cds quite a long time ago using clonecd. They always seemed to work, even after i updated the game to 1.11b. Back then they still seemed to work in win98 with daemon tools 3.47. I remember having some strange problem back then, but it quickly resolved itself and never manifested itself again.

I have not tried uninstalling 4.08HE with 1.39 SPTD and replacing it with 3.47 to see if it works with that version, however i know that it worked, and i know that ive used my images (.ccd/img/sub/cue) before successfully.

Anyway, Diablo 2 will (except for twice out of about 150 attempts) say "Please verify that your diablo 2 expansion disc is in your cdrom, then click on retry." It will not play from the mounted play disc, nor the mounted expansion disc.

However, when i mount BOTH the play disc, and the expansion disc, it will not give me the error. But this is *only* if i mount the play disc in a lower drive letter than the expansion.

I normally mount images in W, X, Y and Z.

If i mount the play disc in Z and the expansion in Y, it will not work.

Working:
Y: Play
Z: Expansion

Nonworking:
Y: Expansion
Z: Play

Can anyone explain this weird behavior to me? Diablo 2 with the expansion installed requires the expansion cd in order to play.. i am totally baffled as to why it requires both images to be mounted, and only in a certain order. If anyone has any ideas as to whats causing this, id love to hear em. I can play now that ive spent 4 hours trying to figure this out, but id rather figure out why its being weird so i can go back to mounting only one image.

PS: A-Ray Scanner 2.0.2.3 returns this:
[06:56:17 AM] SecuROM 5.03.13.0190 detected -> F:\Games\Diablo II\Game.exe

[Jito463]

Well, if I can dig up my discs from wherever I stored them, I'll test it and find out, though I'm running XP x64, not the x86 XP.

[Ratha]

Heres a further development. Apparently the game will not launch unless theres seemingly any image mounted in a lower letter than the LoD expansion disc.

I tried mounting an MDF, an ISO, BIN/CUE, CCD/IMG/SUB, it appears that it does not matter what is loaded. I even loaded an iso copy of my win98 cd which i dont believe had any protection on it. As long as there is another image (which is not the LoD image) loaded in a lower drive letter, the diablo2 image will work. Loading two LoD's does not work.

Short of installing an older copy of daemon tools, ive run out of things that i can think of to test or write down. I may do that later on, i just hate resetting all my drive letters after removing the program.

I do not have any .net framework installed on this computer, i uninstalled 1.1 and 2.0 about a month ago, this is a 32 bit copy of windows xp, running on an AMD XP 2500, 512 megs ram, very few processes running in the background. Fully windows updated.

[MaLing]

Did you install the game from a lower letter drive? The game may look for the drive where it was installed.

[Ratha]

Ive installed from a high and low letter, that dosnt seem to make a difference with diablo 2 from what ive found. Ive still not gotten around to installing an older daemon tools to test that out, will post the results on that when i can.

[Jito463]

I finally founds my discs. While I didn't test with DTools, I did test with Alcohol and had no problems running from the first virtual drive using just the expansion disc. Though my optical drives (Y, Z) are higher drive letters than my virtual drives (P, Q, R, S). I don't know if that makes any difference.

[MaLing]

Ratha, when you start the game from your virtual drive, are your physical drives empty?

I believe your physical drives' letters are lower than virtual ones, so if you empty all your virtual drives and physical drives, and then put the original expansion disc in a physical drive (better in the lowest one), will the game run?

[Ratha]

Jito463, ive tested with my virtual drives lower than my phsyical ones, it didnt seem to make a difference for me.

MaLing, i usually disable my phsyical drives in windows (not disconnect) so they are usually empty and not recognized. Apparently using the original cd does seem to work, sometimes. I spent about 10 minutes fiddling with it and it wasnt working, then it just started working all of the sudden and i couldnt get it to stop working. If that does not make any sense to you, know that it also does not make any sense to me.

Man.. this problem keeps getting more and more complex.

Ive basically determined that as long as there is a cd, virtual or physical in a lower drive letter than the diablo 2 expansion cd, the expansion will start. The only exception to this rule is that the cd must not be a blank cd.

I reinstalled diablo 2 to test non expansion issues, did it from my virtual device instead of my physical one.

With the original diablo 2 play disc, i get random (but infrequent) errors telling me to make sure i have the correct disk inserted. Also, sometimes it checks the wrong drive and says to please insert that disc into W, or X, and then it checks the physical one and says 'make sure you have the correct disk inserted' but then it will work if i press okay a few times. I seem to recall this was the problem i had in win98.

Heres where it gets complicated.

Another unexplained weirdness is that when i insert *any* non blank disc into my physical drive, and use my clonecd play disc image, the game runs. However the play disc (non expansion) cannot be 'tricked' my mounting a virtual image in a lower drive letter. Apparently that only works with the expansion. But as stated at the beginning of this paragraph, it works if i use any physical cd, music, motherboard drives, windows, data, another game.. but only in a lower drive letter. This is on a fresh install of diablo 2, no patches, version 1.03.

I have discovered that my diablo 2 images no longer work without emulation. If i turn emulation on, diablo 2, and the expansion are playable from virtual drives without 'tricks'. Ive never had to use emulation ever, i made all my own images, and they always worked.

Possible reasons for the strange behavior:

Daemon tools bug.
Some unforseen consequences of a newer installed game's protection mechanism.
Some intentional issue involving a newer copy protection mechanism.
Windows update broke something.
CloneCD format has somehow become non or less functional with new DT or with windows XP, all my images were made and used in win98.

(On a side note, emulation in vista wasnt working though when i tried on a friend's laptop, and we were unable to get the game to run, except for once with emulation on, and after waiting 5-10 minutes since trying to start the game, it eventually loaded, but was displaying weird characters in the upper left hand corner of the screen, ascii, inside a single black ascii square, IE only one character at a time.)

-

I have to conclude that between a newer version of daemon tools, and moving from win98 to XP, some of my images no longer function as expected. Using emulation on them isnt a big deal, and more than half of them are old enough to not have but very basic protection. When i had created them i was under the impression that they were good images though. Particularly because they worked at the time.

For diablo 2 there are a few ways around the issue. I may go install the demo of alcohol and see if creating a new image resolves it. I may also try testing the images on a fresh install of windows with nothing but DT and Diablo 2 installed, no updates or anything. See if it isnt somehow related to other installed software.

[Jito463]

Definitely use Alcohol to recreate the images. Either the 120% demo or the 52% free edition if you don't need the burning engine.

[Ratha]

One more update.

Diablo 2 standard, and expansion both work with daemon tools 3.47, no issues, no emulation, single image mounts, no tricks on a fresh install of windows XP SP2

I will uninstall that and install 4.08 and see what happens.

Seems that 4.08 HE SPTD 1.39 does not like my images. The new install exhibits the exact same behavior as my computer, expansion requires an image/cd in a lower drive in order to load. Play disc will not boot without emulation/original disc in 4.08.

So the 'problem' lies somewhere between the changes made from 3.47 to 4.08. Considering that its a major version difference, that dosnt surprise me at all. However i would be very curious to know why it works in 3.47 and not in 4.08. And since its so quirky, if its not a bug with the program itself, instead of bad images.

Anyone have more thoughts on this matter? Things to test that i have not?

[Ratha]

Regarding the diablo 2 play disc:

I made an image using the securom *new* and the (4/5/7) profile in alcohol, but it said it couldnt get DPM using the current device, ill have to look into that a bit more later.

The new image seems to work in the new daemon tools, without emulation, no tricks. Just because i think the error could be related to the way daemon tools handles clone cd format, im going to mount my clonecd image, and then rip it with alcohol into MDS/MDF.

I was wrong. :P

Mounting with 3.47 and ripping: failed to play with 3.47
Mounting with 3.47 and ripping: failed to play with 4.08
Mounting with 4.08 and ripping: failed to play with 4.08

I didnt bother testing emulation or trying to trick the re-ripped ccd images.

Okay, so like ive known for quite awhile now, its likely a combination of imperfect image and strange behavior with DT. It looks like im going to be re-ripping a handful of different cds.. man thats gonna be a drag. Ive made 108 different rips.. thankfully about half of them didnt have any protection and are so old i wont need to worry about it too often. The same half probably wont even run in XP. Lol.

Im still very curious why the old daemon tools does not have trouble with my image, but the new one does.