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Is there a no-CD patch/crack for Need For Speed II SE?

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First post, by adadak

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I just don't wanna bother myself with constant changing CDs or mounting ISO images anymore. I've been looking literally everywhere and a functional crack for NFS 1 or 2 is nowhere to be found. The one I found seems to have a corrupted executable or I'm doing it wrong.

Reply 1 of 12, by dr_st

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I have instructions for NFS: SE DOS version.

For NFS2: SE I think I got the game pre-cracked ages ago from some pirated distribution. I do have the CD, so I can try to check if the crack from GBW you mentioned works on it, or if I can find alternative instructions.

I have not played NFS1 Windows version.

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Reply 2 of 12, by dr_st

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OK, after looking into it some more, I now have working no-CD instructions for TNFS: SE (DOS and Windows versions) as well as NFS II SE (Regular and 3dfx versions).

The patches are very simple - all you need is a hex-editor. No 3rd party cracks are necessary. These are only for the Special Editions - I don't have any accessible copies of the original releases of NFS1/NFs2 to investigate.

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Reply 3 of 12, by adadak

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Thank you so much for your help! Hex-edited executables work perfectly fine. As for NFS I the problem is how to change the default path the game is trying to load files from. I tried to make a batch file launcher that would load FAKECD or SUBST before starting the NFS_WIN.EXE but they both failed to assign the NFS directory to drive E: (where my CD-ROM is assigned by default).

Reply 4 of 12, by dr_st

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Could you elaborate more about the batch file?

For NFS_WIN - I found out that only SUBST works, as its effects persist even after the command prompt window is closed; not so with FAKECD.

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Reply 5 of 12, by adadak

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SUBST says "cannot subst a network drive". FAKECD displays abort, retry, fail error on drive E.

Here's the batch for SUBST

@echo off […]
Show full quote

@echo off

Subst E: C:\Nfsse\

Start C:\Nfsse\NFS_WIN.EXE

exit

And here for FAKECD

@echo off […]
Show full quote

@echo off

lh C:\Nfsse\fakecd.exe C:\Nfsse /l:E
E:
Nfsse
C:
C:\nfsse\fakecd.exe /u

Start C:\Nfsse\NFS_WIN.EXE

exit

Reply 6 of 12, by dr_st

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OK, you are right. Turns out SUBST will not work if there already is a CD drive mounted at that letter.

Thanks to you, I figured out a better solution. The paths to the CD drive are hardcoded at installation time inside GAMEDATA\CONFIG\PATHS.DAT. Open it and you will find several references to E:\somepath\subpath, where E: is the CD drive you installed from.

You can change them to any other letter that is not occupied, and then SUBST will work. However, you can simply change all instances of E:\ to .\\ (note the double backslash - this is to keep the file size the same and prevent any offsets from moving). This will tell the game to look for the files directly under the current directory, and you don't need to use any SUBST/FAKECD at all.

Write-up has been updated. 😀

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Reply 8 of 12, by dr_st

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Hmm... I tested it on two different systems with no issues last night.

You did replace E:\ with .\\, right? 3 characters with 3 characters?

Does the game crash upon load or at some other point? Any error message?

Does the DOS version work (assuming you can run it in pure DOS)? Under Windows (Millennium), the DOS version crashes for me as well, but the Windows version work.

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Reply 10 of 12, by dr_st

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Strange. Perhaps your editor somehow corrupted the file? I'm attaching my PATHS.DAT (zipped).

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Reply 12 of 12, by chinny22

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Man I've been looking for this for so long!
I remember hex editing "something" to the original Need for Speed (non SE edition) back in the day but couldn't remember what file and values.
Of course I now have SE and a slowly dying but original Creative CD drive in my dos rig but can't bring myself to replace for small handful of games I haven't been able to No-CD.
You've made me a very happy manchild 😀