More Awesome Than You!

No, really, it did!
So I noticed a couple of times that when I pulled a disk out of my dvd r/w drive that it was more hot than normal, like it had been written too and not just read... Then I noticed that there was a tiny crack near the center of my seasons disk 1, and I know I'm super careful about keeping my preschooler away from my disks and I know I didn't drop it or anything so I thought that was strange... but it played just fine...
So then I start up SimPe and my dvd drive starts spinning (which I thought was odd since SimPe points to a spot on the hard drive, not the disk) and I hear this loud pop.... open the drive, many pieces fall out. Shiny ones, I could make a mosaic.
I have never heard of this happening before.
Anyway, until I replace my disk and drive, I know that some people around here... acquire... games, so I thought someone might have a tip on a way to play without my disk. Preferably a way I could still build with, I recall something about an .exe that disables build and buy mode.

This should fix it for you. Go here:

http://www.gameburnworld.com/gp/gamefixes/sims2seasons.shtml

Download the exe linked there. Go to the seasons executable, found here:

C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2 Seasons\TSBin

and rename the file "Sims2EP5" to "Sims2EP5-original" or something like that, so that you keep the old exe around in case you need to patch or you decide you want to try running from the CD again. (Well, if/when you get a new one.) You'll probably need to switch the exe back to install a new expansion pack, too...

Put the new downloaded file into the same folder, make sure it has the same name as the original exe ("Sims2EP5"... I think it comes named that already but you know...) and voila!

I downloaded my no-cd crack from this very site, so imo they're trustworthy, but as with downloading any exe off the internet and especially ones pertaining to illegal activities, do run a virus scan on the file before using. Well, using a no-cd crack isn't illegal if you've bought the game, of course, but they're often used by people who haven't so... yeah.  ::)


Edited to add: Oddly enough, I have heard of CDs doing that. Probably either your drive is spinning too fast (which causes the cracks, and cracks + speed = asplodey) and/or the optics are too hot (and cracks + heat + normal spinning = asplodey). If it isn't a big deal to you to replace the drive, I'd do that. Not too expensive and waaay less of a headache than trying to figure why it's blowing up your CDs. :)

Thanks! Yeah, I'm replacing the drive. It's still under warranty. The tech guy looked and looked for something about cds exploding but didn't find anything so he said "So what you're telling me is the cd is stuck and the drive won't open it for you to get it out." so I said "Sure." and he said "Good, your warranty covers that."

 :D
That may be the most helpful thing I've heard about techies in a long time! (Present company excluded, of course!)

Hmm, I wonder if that particular .exe would also work with a downloaded version from EALink...  I'm getting rather tired of not being able to play when my cable company decides to "upgrade" something that was working fine to start with.

If you registered your software, Maxis will send you a new CD for cheap.

Why should sara have to pay for it at all? She already did.

Yes, they will, actually, which rather surprised me when I lost my Uni discs, luckily, I had registered it as soon as I installed it, so the code was retrievable.  For people that got lazy and started using EALink however (such as myself), no amount of red tape or hoop jumping can convince them to send you the discs for any reason.  Kept telling me that I'd need to go out and purchase the physical software from a retailer or order from the EAstore, so I've been looking for a bypass for this for a while now.

All the more reason to give them as little money as possible.

Do not pay for a game more than once!

I'm weary about replacing the .exe with some cracked one. *shrugs*

Personally, I would check out the MATY FAQ.  I think there are some decent instructions there.  Since you've already installed Seasons, you really just need to obtain a copy of the ISO/image, then use daemontools to mount it.  You could then use ASR or sd4hider.  daemontools will fool your computer into thinking that there is a cd drive (the mounted image acts like a virtual drive) and your game should run as normal.


Ste

It's like $5 to pay for the plastic CD, some sloping forehead intern to put the CD in an envelope and type your address on a mailing label, and postage.  Heck of a lot cheaper than buying a new copy (unless she can persuade the tech to fork over for that too (when pigs fly)) and safer than using a cracked copy.


Me too.  I'd back up my exe, try the crack, and get the new CD from Maxis ASAP.

Actually my plan for replacing the cd is something along the lines of "My mom gave me this game last weekend and I don't have the receipt 'cause she didn't give it to me, but look, there's only one cd in it!"
Say, syber, can you say that again, in a dummies version? Aspifically this: You could then use ASR or sd4hider.

Ugh, I know. So far so good, my cable internet very rarely goes out...but when it does, it usually takes a whole 24 hours for them to fix it. And downloading off EAlink is the only way for me to get the game within the release week. Yup, I'm one of those addicted whores who needs it right now. For some freakish reason, no place in Chicago or Evanston that's easy for my carless self to get to ever has it on time. Will unplug my internet tonight and try the .exe to see if it works for ya. You never know.

You're tired about replacing the .exe with a crack?  I think you meant wary.. or perhaps leery :D


I'm using that crack .. and my game seems to load a zillion times faster! I'm guessing my D: is getting a bit weak after 4 years of hard usage.  I really like not having to dig out my disc, wipe off the fingerprints belonging to whichever child put it away.. and then grrr about any scratches that might have shown up since I last cleaned it.

They got me to go with EALink for GLS, before I knew that it wasn't as painless as it originally was for the HP. I was not about to put up with the connection crap- or having to just allow another program to run- so I used the cracked exe. I even then UNINSTALLED the damn link program, and it worked fine.

The only real problem with using the exe's are that finding the updated one after a patch is pretty impossible.  :-\ I need to go back and check to see if the Seasons patch really did fix anything, because I've had it with it taking 3+ tries to start Seasons when I want to play.  (Damn safedisc!)

It's a lot easier than you'd think really.  I'm an idjit when it comes to this type of stuff, but Venusy put a how-to in the MATY FAQ:


If you don't have a bittorrent client, then you should get one (http://www.utorrent.com/).  You might even be able to find an image from www.gamecopyworld.com - I would look for one that doesn't have/mention a hack/cracked .exe

Download daemontools (http://www.daemon-tools.cc/) and install it.  I suggest 3.4 if you can find it.  I tried the 3.6 but it gave my old puter problems. *shrugs* If you have a brand new, shiney compy, then you probably don't have to worry so much.

Also get ASR from the same website as daemontools.  Unzip/rar/whatever to wherever you want to store it (I keep it in C:\Program Files\ASR).

Install daemon tools.  You will get a red icon with a lightning bolty kinda looking thing in your systray (the tray where your clock shows up in your task bar - assuming you are running WindowsXP).  If you are running on mac... uh... you're screwed? :P

Otherwise, (right?)click on the icon and choose the mount option.  Drill down to wherever your ISO image is located.

Edit your Sims 2 launch icon thingy as per Venusy's instructions above.

You should now be able to play your game as normal. :)

Ste

PS. Yes, I meant wary.  I am weary from the day's work so my weary mind was not working properly.

Irregardless :P I am dubious about using cracked .exes just cuz... they contain executable code and I ph33r viruses or trojans or what not.  But... who knows... perhaps ISO images could easily contain viruses as well. *shrugs*  But, I only started using this method recently, and usually just got the image from someone I considered trustworthy, like Argon or BlueSoup.  Only recently did I try to acquire the Celebrations image on my own, but then it turned out that I didn't even need to. :P

I don't get why a couple of you seem so very frightened of a cracked exe, that you're so willing to run a cracked .iso... which is just as capable of containing viruses!

Isn't that what virus scanners are for?  ???

At any rate, yes, you can mount a cracked (er, I mean "legally backed up") copy of the first disk. Just keep in mind that windows really does think each of those virtual drives is a real one... at one point I had plugged in a USB thumb drive, my printer which has some photo printing/storing capability which makes it show up as a drive, my normal two hard drives, my normal DVD drive, and three mounted drives... and I got a popup in windows that said "Your configuration has changed significantly since Windows was first registered. Please call 1-800-BLAH."

Ultimately I was on the phone with microsoft for quite a while. They never really told me what they were convinced I was doing, exactly, but...  ::) it took a while to get them to give me a customer service unlock code so I could use my computer again. Thank goodness I'd actually paid for my copy of windows and had a real activation key to give them. If I'd bought my computer pre-loaded with windows and didn't have a key, or I had a cracked key, they wouldn't have given me that customer service code and I would be SOL. Probably would have had to wipe the thing, reformat and reinstall.

I guess my point is it's just something to keep in mind when deciding to use an exe vs. a mounted iso.

Heh, well, that and the extra exe is about 5 mb... and the iso about 500mb...  ;D


Regarding the locked-out build and buy modes: That seems to only happen when you install the game from the commonly available, poorly done cracks. If you're using an install from real disks and just bypassing the cd on startup, whichever method you like should be fine.

Why such an old version?  Daemontools is up to 4.09, which was recently released and works fine.  I've been using the 4.x versions since they were released with no problems at all.

I always crack my games. It gets so tiresome to insert the disc and then take it out and then insert it and so on. It also lowers the risk of your disc exploding into smithereens...

Disks are now very cheaply made, high-speed drives spin them much faster than CDs were originally specced to be used at, and copy protection keeps them spinning unnecessarily. They WILL eventually explode. Virtual drives, however, do not use real disks and if a CD image explodes, you just put a new copy in. I don't think virtual drives actually emulate the CD exploding, though.

However, note that if your actual CD explodes, the results can cause injury or death by shrapnel. Which is bad.

I opened a drive one day, it must have been faulty as the disk was still spinning as the tray came out, it frisbeed across the room - very scary as it whizzed past my head. My techie ex has had a near shrapnel experience.

I wouldn't be surprised if a cd drive could  kill you with an exploding disk. I was almost killed by a portable cd player once... I accidentally hit the open button while it was playing, and it launched the CD at my head with the force of a speeding bullet.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot this PSA:

Don't put cracked CD's into your drive. As you noticed, they explode.  ;)

Whether it's the drive's fault or the CD's fault that it cracked, who knows, but once it was cracked, you shouldn't have used it. :)

And last I checked, EA charged $10 for the replacement disk. Although, you're within the 90 day warranty on it too, so it might not cost you anything. If the "my mom gave me this game" trick doesn't work, you might want to try that route.

Another option (though you need the actual disk to set it up) is GameJackal, which costs ten bucks to register and lets you make a bona fide legal no-CD image of practically any game you own.  Easier than hunting down a crack or .ISO or whatever for each one.

Good news! The "cracked" .exe works with the EALink download of Seasons. I'm patched as well. I downloaded and installed it, then unplugged my internet cable. Loaded just fine!

This seems very purpose-defeating.

Well, not if your purpose is to preserve your original disks so they don't wear out or explode and threaten your personal safety.  :p

Registering software is inherently contrary to your personal safety. Not to mention you're peddling without paying the advertising fee.

I used Game Drive for awhile, but it takes longer to prepare the image than it does to download the cracked versions.  ::) Why pay $10 to do all the work, when someone else does it for free?

But an image isn't really "cracked" is it.  I mean, I could be wrong, but I imagine that software that backs up cds such as alcohol doesn't exactly "crack" or "hack" the game, as opposed to a cracked .exe which probably actually involves some personal tweaking. *shrugs*

I find using an image far less likely to involve viruses since any body can just do it using widely available software that  I'm just reluctant to fork the cash over for. :P



Virus/trojan scanners aren't infallible.  Don't some of them have to be "trained" on new ones anyway?



Uhh... if you bought a machine from a legitimate source with pre-loaded windows, you should be given a product key regardless, even if in most cases you are given recovery cds branded by the vendor that built your machine.  They are legally required to place that product key sticker on the machine itself.



This seems to happen mostly with cracked .exes whereas, if you just have an image, you shouldn't have to worry about it.  Because basically an image should just be an exact copy of the cd itself without any additional crap (afaik).



On my brand new shiney machine, I am using v4.08 without any problems (so far... *knocks on wood* :P).  On my older machine, when I first started using Daemontools, I think it was one of the older versions.  I might have transposed the numbers... it might have been 4.03 or something like that... but I am fairly certain that when I moved up to 4.06 I started having major problems with my computer.  The OS would constantly freeze up and after multiple re-installs, I appeared to narrow it down to daemon tools.  That is to say, when I did yet another rebuild and didn't install daemontools at all, the computer worked fine.  The only difference I could think of, before I was having problems, was the fact that I had upgraded daemontools.  The version prior to that didn't seem to give me any problems.  I posted all about this, and I vaguely recall something being mentioned about one of the other daemontools related modules or something being a problem.  I tried uninstalling that portion alone, but it still didn't help.  So I just stopped using it on my older machine.  My sister's compy didn't seem to have a problem, so I just chalked it up to the fact that her machine was newer.  I think her OS build already had SP2 included whereas my old machine pre-dated SP2.  And even though I tried installing daemon tools after updating to SP2, I would still have lock up issues. :-\

No, I'm recommending a program that works well for me and that I think is pretty darn cheap.  If I was advertising, I would have said "Buy GameJackal(TM) now for the low, low price of only $9.95!  Hurry, supplies are limited!  Order now and receive this fabulous set of Ginsu knives absolutely free!"  Also, I would have provided a link.  :p

I'm not afraid of any viruses it might contain.    I'm worried about all the bugs the cracked EXEs contain.

Assuming that what you're downloading is the actual iso, and not a virus...And assuming that they did just image it, and not insert viruses into the code.  You're either downloading what the person claims it is or you're downloading a virus- what they claim it is has no bearing on its likelihood of being a virus.  :D

I usually download stuff from pirate bay, and there you can tell very well from the feedback whether or not stuff is genuine.

And that's where I got my cracked exe.  ;)

I wouldn't worry too much about it. Usually the cracked .EXE is identical to the original one
with the exception that the check for an existing Original-CD is circumvented.
So you get exactly all your bugs back, you've come to love and cheerish, on your original CD.
In some cases (where the cracked one is significantly bigger than the original) the exe had to be extracted first (topic EXE-compactors)

No Problems so far with all the No-CD solutions I've found on GameCopyWorld and GameBurnWorld. From my experience, they're both far more reliable than PB

There is no freakin' way I'm going to shell out another $10 for a legally bought game. (I ran into that problem several times before, when myson started ruining our PS2 Discs)

-le

I've used it as well, but it seemed to have problems with GLS.

Also, the program itself is no longer being updated. The makers can no longer sell it, either. So much for that.

Sooo, sara_dippity, how did things works out for you?

Well I still have a broken cd drive (will until this weekend or so), but the cracked .exe hasn't caused any issues and much complaining at Walmart did land me a new copy.

Well, Sara, that must have been some complaining at Wally-World.  At mine, they just say, "No.  Next?"  and someone moves you out of the way.  If the case to a computer disk has been opened, they do not allow them to be returned. 

Which is why I avoid Wal Mart as much as possible.  (Sigh)

I have the EA game link too, and have GLS, Pets, and Seasons from it.  I have had one issues that caused me to unistall and reinstall the games again.  For some reason, they just stopped loading after a time.  After the reinstall, they worked fine.   :-\But, yeah, it sucks if your internet is down and you'd like to play your game.  It happened to me Sunday.  Our DSL router went down, and it took me an hour on the phone with tech support before I could play. 

They may have been a bit more lenient since she was exchanging a "defective" game for the exact same title.  Might have been even more effective if she'd had the broken bits to put in the case!