Disk Not Recognised - Won't Load Game (UPDATED)

[Ancient Sim]

Yesterday when I put my OFB disk into the drive, it wasn't recognised.  I took it out and put it back and it worked.  Today, the same thing happened again and after several tries I had to give up and use my Game Jackal profile (which I tend to avoid now as I've used it so often it takes forever to go through all the numbers).  The disk worked fine on my son's computer and probably would have on my daughter's too, except that's even more poorly than this one insofar as it won't boot-up, apparently because the boot.ini file has been deleted and we have no XP Home disk to get it back, only an XP Pro which won't work.  But that's another problem ...

Anyway ... I tried a disk I'd put some data on and that worked, so did a disk with MP3 files on it, but none of my pre-recorded disks worked, not TS2 ones or any others.  Now, NO disks work.  The drive seems to be trying to read them, but after it's made a few noises it just stops dead.  I've tried using System Restore and various things like that, but nothing works.  The computer is only about 3 months old, so I can't see that the drive would fail that quickly - the ones on my other pc's are years old and they've never gone wrong.  All the other pc's have two, but unfortunately this only has one.  It's called a DVD-RW drive and when I put the details into Google, one link said that it's not really meant for cd's only dvd's (that person's had stopped working, too), but surely they're both the same in terms of playing a disk?

I'm a bit concerned with JM always going on about cd-drives blowing-up, not to mention the fact that the EP that doesn't exist is due out shortly.  I don't want to be without the pc if I can help it and I'm just wondering if there could be some corrupted file or whatever.  I do have a full restore facility, but I don't want to reformat unless I have to.  I know how to share files between the pc's, but I've still not worked out how to delete stuff from one and leave it on the other (if you even can), so I'd have to mess about putting all my neighbourhoods & downloads onto a cd on my son's computer, which would be a pain.

I do have several spare drives I could swop it with, except I've never been inside a computer in my life, plus they're all a horrible creamy-white and mine is nice and black (they'd look stupid on my tower) and I'd invalidate the guarantee by doing that anyway.  I just wondered really if it sounds like the problem is with the drive itself or something that's gone wrong with a file or something.  It seems odd that my own recorded disks worked when the bought ones didn't, which makes me wonder if somehow the drive wasn't recognising something it should have to do with copyrigiht protection or whatever.  Then again, none of them work now, so maybe not.

[BlueSoup]

It does sound like you have something interfering with copyright, sorta.  But I am no computer expert, I'm just basing it on my own lousy personal experience.

I had Daemon installed, and then it wouldn't let me install the game when I had to reinstall.  So after I uninstalled Daemon it all worked fine.    I'm not saying that's your problem or that deleting it temporarily will fix it, but it can't hurt.

[Avalikia]

It sounds to me like it's hardware related, not software related.  At my house we've had a couple of new DVD players refusing to play anything within weeks of purchase (and since they've all had a warranty we just keep replacing them) with similar symptoms to what you're describing.  Of course, these were DVD players and not DVD-RWs, and I'm not too familiar with those so I could be wrong.  I'd be more inclined to blame the software if the decline hadn't been so gradual; since it went through of phase of some working and some not I'm inclined to agree that, since it was designed to run DVDs, that the CDs gradually wore out/broke/etc. something.  If you don't get a better reply overnight (my time) I'll run the situation past my dad (a computer programmer and general go-to guy) and see what he thinks.

[BlueSoup]

I had the same problem as you once too, Avalikia and it turned out to be the software for the CD burner.  I took it to the repair shop and they reinstalled that and it worked fine afterwards.

[J. M. Pescado]

This routinely happens. Copy protection relies on the extreme corner cases of what a CD can do, all of which is inherently outside the specifications for what CDs are SUPPOSED to do. Thus, sometimes they just don't work. And this is why copy protection is a load of bunkus. Also, new "protections" are extremely nosy and try to dictate what you can and can't have even installed on your computer. Just forget about it, hoist the Jolly Roger, and play on.

[Avalikia]

I had the same problem as you once too, Avalikia and it turned out to be the software for the CD burner.  I took it to the repair shop and they reinstalled that and it worked fine afterwards.

Well, it's my parent's DVD player(s) so I've not be involved in the whole thing, but I'll suggest that to my parents.

[BlueSoup]

After it happened a few more times, I just did a restore point thingy and that worked too.

[Avalikia]

Oh, my dad wasn't as asleep as I thought.  Here's a rough paraphrase of what he said:  He also believes that it's most likely a hardware problem.  If that is the case, there's not much you can do but replace the drive.  However, he offers these suggestions:  It's possible that you could find a diagnostic program that will check out the offending drive and tell you if it's still good or not (but unfortunately neither he or I know where you'd find it).  It can tell you if the drive itself is okay, in which case it would be a software problem.  He doesn't think that it's a matter of the copy protection; he thinks that the drive was instead gradually losing it's ability to read different formats, which would explain why it was able to run your recorded disks for awhile but not the others.  He also mentioned that it's also possibly a problem with the drivers, so you might want to check those out.  He also added some fine print about how he specializes in software and not hardware so, while he has an educated guess, it's still a guess.

[Ancient Sim]

This routinely happens. Copy protection relies on the extreme corner cases of what a CD can do, all of which is inherently outside the specifications for what CDs are SUPPOSED to do. Thus, sometimes they just don't work. And this is why copy protection is a load of bunkus. Also, new "protections" are extremely nosy and try to dictate what you can and can't have even installed on your computer. Just forget about it, hoist the Jolly Roger, and play on.

Well, presuming you mean use Game Jackal, yes I can for now, but what happens when I want to install the furry EP that doesn't exist?  What I am trying to avoid having to do is send the pc away, because without it I will start blubbering in a corner and will need that shrink guy. I'd have to start doing normal things like cleaning the house and talking to people.  It'd only take an hour or so of that to send me completely over the edge.

Oh, another weird thing it did that forgot to mention.  I put the OFB disk in and it did its usual thing of not acknowledging its presence.  I then took it out and put my mp3 disk back in.  It made various stuttering nosies, then up popped all the folders for OFB???  Sounds like a serious delayed reaction, but how the hell did it bring those up when I'd taken the disk out and put another one in?  They wouldn't even go until I rebooted.

[J. M. Pescado]

Well, presuming you mean use Game Jackal, yes I can for now, but what happens when I want to install the furry EP that doesn't exist?  What I am trying to avoid having to do is send the pc away, because without it I will start blubbering in a corner and will need that shrink guy. I'd have to start doing normal things like cleaning the house and talking to people.  It'd only take an hour or so of that to send me completely over the edge.

Installs don't check CDs, only trying to play the game does. So you'll image the disk and use the image of that disk instead. No sweat. THE DREAD PIRATE ROBERTS LEAVES NO SURVIVORS!

[Ancient Sim]

All this talk of pirates is totally confusing me.  I have to install the game from the cd first, before I can use Game Jackal to make a profile, and I won't be able to do that if the CD-ROM drive can't read it.  I don't think Game Jackal can run the game before I've actually installed it, because you have to put the registration number and everything in and set it all up.

[jsalemi]

All this talk of pirates is totally confusing me.  I have to install the game from the cd first, before I can use Game Jackal to make a profile, and I won't be able to do that if the CD-ROM drive can't read it.  I don't think Game Jackal can run the game before I've actually installed it, because you have to put the registration number and everything in and set it all up.

I believe JMP is talking about getting the cd image via other means.

That actually saved my butt -- I installed Glamour Life just fine, but when it was time to start the game, it just absolutely refused to see the CD in any of my 3 drives (a DVD-Rom, DVD writer, and CD writer).  The disk image that was posted here + daemon tools let me play with my perfectly legal copy. I hate copy protection schemes -- always have and always will. 

[jrd]

The only people negatively affected by copy protection are the legal customers.

Pirates bypass the CP from the start, but people who pay the ridicilously high price also have to suffer with broken merchandise. At least EA Games isn't Ubisoft stupid enough to use StarForce spyware....

[J. M. Pescado]

There's also the obvious fact that forcing people to study the ways of pirates makes them that much more likely to turn pirate themselves.

[jrd]

(...) it won't boot-up, apparently because the boot.ini file has been deleted and we have no XP Home disk to get it back, only an XP Pro which won't work.

Huh? Boot.ini is just a text file which tells NTDetect.com where to look for Windows. You can usually just copy&paste it from another system or write it from scratch.

Most boot.ini files look like this:

Code:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

Just replace the Pro string with "Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition" for the budget version. Or don't, since it doesn't matter at all what is in there unless you multiboot.

Unless your Windows is NOT on the first partition of the first HDD on the first ATA interface, you can use the above file.

[Frankenbeasley]

There's also the obvious fact that forcing people to study the ways of pirates makes them that much more likely to turn pirate themselves.

Do pirates use CD-Aarrrr? Possibly CD-Aarrrr Doubloon...

[Ancient Sim]

OK, we might just be getting somewhere here.  I've done a lot of fiddling about and one of the things I did was download some Nero checker thing.  When it tried to access the cd-drive, it came up with an error message that I'd seen before when all this trouble started.  This is it:

C:\WINDOWS\system32\cmd.exe
C:\PROGRA~1\Symantec\S32EVNT1.dll. An installable Virtual Device Driver failed Dll initialization. Choose 'Close' to terminate the application

I hit ignore instead and discovered that the Nero checker thingy said there was no cd in Drive E (there was).  Entered the above error in Google and found a Microsoft page which gave instructions to remove a key from the Registry.  Did this and stopped getting the error.  I then went into the Registry and did a search for Symantec entries and removed them all, except a group it refused to let me delete which ha to do with drivers.  No change to my cd-drive, but the Game Jackal image no longer worked, it kept asking for the cd.

I have now gone back to yesterday with System Restore and Game Jackal is working again, so it seems that deleting either the key relating to the above error, or the other Symantec stuff, has affected it.  Could this possibly have to do with the CD not working?  It seems unlikely as I hadn't altered anything on the pc or downloaded anything, but it seems odd that I can't delete some of the keys, plus I have this Symantec program (Symantec Network Drivers Service) in services.msc that I have no way of removing and it will appear in start-up if I don't disable it ... the strange thing is, I removed Norton Anti-Virus & Firewall at least two months ago and have NO Symantec products on my pc now at all.  Of course, it does come bundled with the pc and is no doubt hidden in the restore files somewhere, but that doesn't explain why it will put itself into my start-up folder if I enable it in services.msc.  It's the word "drivers" that bothers me, because that's what the error was all about.

I've run a virus check and Ad-Aware, but nothing came up with those.  The only thing I can't do is see if the cd-drive is working in Safe Mode because I can't get into it.  Everytime I try, the splash screen disappears before I have chance to select anything and Windows just starts up. 

[Li'l Brudder]

I've heard of Nero causing problems before.  I just can't remember from where I heard it.  I'm pretty sure it was here.

Found it!  Here you go, Ancient: Here it is!

And here are a few more:

Here Are a Few More 1,
Here Are a Few More 2

And, as a footnote, you wouldn't BELIEVE how many generous search results I found.  At least a million.

[Ancient Sim]

I don't actually have Nero (the trial ran out), it was just a tool I downloaded today to check the drive with.  I can't remember what it's called because it's gone now as I did the System Restore to the day before.

I still don't know how I am meant to put the non-existent furry EP on without a cd-drive that can read it, but maybe someone will explain it to me s-l-o-w-l-y and with great patience ... or maybe I will just get a new cd-drive.  I still think there's some other problem causing it, but if I do a complete reinstall of XP I'll lose all my files as I can't save anything, unless I mess about doing it via file transfer ... maybe I will try to find a virtual drive online somewhere.  Anybody know of a good (free) one?  The main problem, of course, is whether my GameJackal profile would still work if I reinstalled XP, because if not I'd not be able to play the game at all and I'd go bananas.

[J. M. Pescado]

Daemon Tools is the standard one favored for use by many.

[Paperbladder]

Supposedly Alcohol 52% has a free version out now, and it's similar to Daemon Tools.  However, since it's not 120% you're better off just using Daemon Tools because Alcohol 52% forces adware installation.

I found that I needed something like CureROM to bypass the SafeDisk protection on the disk, but I believe sd4hide does the exact same thing.

[sintrinity]

I don't really know anything about hardware other than the basic necessities but I have occasionally had problems with our networked PCs reading the CDs.

It is so nice since I bought GL as an electronic download (wasn't really worth going to the store) and now I don't even have to worry about it.  I trust my broadband connection much more than I trust not having CD problems.

I'm really going to miss starting up with no CD with the never-to-be-mentioned expansion.

[jsalemi]

I'm really going to miss starting up with no CD with the never-to-be-mentioned expansion.

Easy to fix -- just do a search here on 'daemon tools' and you'll find many, many threads on how to avoid having to use the CD after installing the game.

[Ancient Sim]

I just happened to log into my other account and the CD-drive worked with a CD containing image files.  I took it out and put my OFB disk in, but it wouldn't recognise that and even after I rebooted and put it back in, it still showed the folder for the image files disk.  This is what happened with the other account when it started going wrong.  What is puzzling is that it worked to start with, so I am now leaning very much towards a software problem.

Both accounts are exactly the same insofar as they're both administrator accounts with full privileges.

Does this help anyone work out the solution???  Could the fact that I recently set-up file-sharing with my son's computer upstairs have anything to do with it?  It was working fine after I set it up, though.  I've also noticed that whenever I right-click on the CD-ROM drive, it asks me if I want to write the files to a CD and I get an icon in the taskbar saying there are files waiting to be written to CD.  Could the write & playback functions somehow have become mixed-up?

This is becoming increasingly frustrating. 

[twistingsims]

  Well, presuming you mean use Game Jackal, yes I can for now, but what happens when I want to install the furry EP that doesn't exist?  What I am trying to avoid having to do is send the pc away, because without it I will start blubbering in a corner and will need that shrink guy. I'd have to start doing normal things like cleaning the house and talking to people.  It'd only take an hour or so of that to send me completely over the edge.

Ancient, I totally empathize with you right now, except my problem is with the gameplay, I miss my sims and I can't play, I too am going to seen blubbering in a corner!!