I sometimes have a problem where some games complain about not being able to read from drive E when the image file of the disc is mounted in G. 🤔

DustyShinigami wrote on 2024-11-23, 17:35:

I sometimes have a problem where some games complain about not being able to read from drive E when the image file of the disc is mounted in G. 🤔

Yes old games expected the CD to be D or E at best, not all but many. I don't know what's the limitations but it is as it is.

BEEN_Nath_58 wrote on 2024-11-23, 19:14:

DustyShinigami wrote on 2024-11-23, 17:35:

I sometimes have a problem where some games complain about not being able to read from drive E when the image file of the disc is mounted in G. 🤔

Yes old games expected the CD to be D or E at best, not all but many. I don't know what's the limitations but it is as it is.

Thanks to another thread, I managed to swap the physical drive and the emulated drive around. So it thinks the emulated one is E:. And then after installing from E, that's helped. To a degree. It'll work if I load the game from the image/CD, but not from the Start Menu or a desktop icon.

Unfortunately, I'm currently having a new issue regarding this. Since changing my D drive, installing an updated BIOS, and trying to re-install games, this problem has re-surfaced and has become a bit more complicated. 😒 Despite installing the game using the emulated/mounted drive - E - the game still keeps asking for the CD when trying to start the game. If I insert the physical CD in F, it still asks for the CD. It only works if both the CD image and physical CD are present. 😮 I've even tried disabling the CD drive in the BIOS, but it still registers it during boot and it's present in the Device Manager and in My Computer.

I was going to try removing the physical drive and then re-install just from the image. But I'm guessing the physical drive has to be present in order for the emulated one to work...? Or is there a specific set up that's needed for the CD drive in the BIOS?

EDIT: Or... is it possible that because I've assigned my CD drive to F in the autoexec/config for DOS, that that's causing issues...?

Did a few tests, but none were successful. Tried mounting the .bin file instead of the .cue. No difference. Tried updating the CD's firmware - no difference. I tried removing the command from the autoexec that changes the physical drive letter from F back to E (a long shot, I know) - no difference. The only thing I have left to try, which I'll do later, is to completely strip things back to basics. If this doesn't work, I'm out of ideas. But it's just gotta! I suspect, since updating the BIOS, something has been screwed up along the way. So I'll have to look at removing Daemon Tools and the mounted drive, so only my physical drive is present. Make sure that's working as it should. I'll have to uninstall the game and re-install from the CD and see if it works. If it doesn't - shit. If it does - I'll have to re-install Daemon Tools and re-set up the emulated drive, uninstall the game, re-install with the image, and then hope that that sorts it. Hopefully.

Well, I’m completely stumped with this one. I’ve tried everything I can think of and nothing has worked. 🙁 I’m out of ideas.

I had a hell of a time resetting everything back to basics. Even after uninstalling Daemon Tools and Alcohol 120%, it still kept seeing the emulated drive. I couldn’t figure out how to get rid of it. Even disconnecting the physical drive still had it showing up in My Computer. I even disconnected everything. At one point, disconnecting the CD drive prevented Windows from loading.
I tried re-installing Daemon Tools and Alcohol and it wouldn’t let me. Complained that the bus/driver was still present from before. Had to trawl through everywhere to remove them in Windows, the Device Manager, and the Registry Editor. Managed to remove the old emulated drive in the end by removing all SCSI devices. It put the main one back on again, but at least it had removed the old drive. Once Alcohol and Daemon Tools were back on, I tried reinstalling the game first using the CDs in the physical drive. The game loaded up properly without asking for the disc. Uninstalled it, created a new emulated drive from Daemon Tools, set it as the E drive, installed the game from the image - still gave me the error about inserting the correct CD. 🙁
Unmounted the drive and set it up in Alcohol instead - same issue still. I even tried tricking it by just having the physical drive active, reinstalled the game, it loaded fine, and then re-set an emulated drive, and switched that to E. Mounted the image - same error. 🙁

I did notice in Daemon Tools that the physical CD drive has 1:0 in brackets. The emulated drive is 0:0. I’m guessing the emulated drive needs to be 1:0…? Not sure how though. Even setting it to E in the device manager, and the physical to F, it still lists it as 0:0. 🙁

So yeah, totally lost with this.

Managed to solve the problem. I was able to try a couple of other things, but either wasn't able to or they didn't work. It looks like the original BS1 and 2 are sticklers for using the correct drive, which is either D, or failing that - E. Even when I installed using the image from E, it wouldn't load the game. So through experimenting, I switched the drives back, so the physical became E and the emulated drive was F. The game loaded from the disc. I then switched them back and modified the Sword.inf file and changed the CD drive from E to F. Loaded the image file and boom - the game loaded up. Unfortunately, any game or program that had previously been installed with E had to be reinstalled using the image on F. And of course if the drives are changed back again, it becomes messed up. And I had to switch them back as BS2 refuses to even install if the image is mounted on anything but D or E.

So in the end, I had to repeat that above process to get the game image to load the game up using E and install BS2 with E. So whatever game requires E will have to be installed and played with E. Everything else will now have to be F. Unless I can change the drive in a config file. I'm not sure if reformatting would correct this issue or if this is here to stay since updating the BIOS to what I now have.

The mid term fix you don't have to reinstall windows, just reinstall any software that isn't smart enough to handle the drive letter change.

Long term fix is next time you do a clean install of windows, change the drive letters right away so all software is installed with the long term setup.
If all your games are installed on D:\ you'll probably find after a clean install of windows the majority of games will just work without the need to reinstall. If you're lucky BS is like this and you can skip the drive letter swap to install.

chinny22 wrote on 2024-12-16, 22:56:

The mid term fix you don't have to reinstall windows, just reinstall any software that isn't smart enough to handle the drive letter change.

Long term fix is next time you do a clean install of windows, change the drive letters right away so all software is installed with the long term setup.
If all your games are installed on D:\ you'll probably find after a clean install of windows the majority of games will just work without the need to reinstall. If you're lucky BS is like this and you can skip the drive letter swap to install.

True. I just hope I don't run into any new issues involving the CD drives. ^^; I was expecting to have an issue with Blood's music again, but even after installing it from the image on the F drive, it was perfectly fine. Under Windows.

I did notice, since installing the latest BIOS to Award 1.60, there's no option now to disable the CD drive. Whereas before there was. I was going to try disabling the physical drive completely as the game's funny about multiple CD drives.

I just wish I could force the physical CD drive to D, but that doesn't look likely with having two HDDs.

If you disable the drive in Device Manager, I'd think that would be enough?
Yeh I'm not aware of any way of breaking the drive letter rule, luckily most games are ok.

chinny22 wrote on 2024-12-16, 23:19:

If you disable the drive in Device Manager, I'd think that would be enough?
Yeh I'm not aware of any way of breaking the drive letter rule, luckily most games are ok.

Unfortunately not. I tried it several times. Rebooting just brings it back. I also tried removing it in Safe Mode, but the same thing happens. I don't even have an option to disable it either.

Very few (possibly, none) games in the Windows era are hardcoded to a specific CD drive letter.
However, some are hardcoded to the first CD drive, or to the drive letter they were installed from.

dr_st wrote on 2024-12-17, 06:33:

Very few (possibly, none) games in the Windows era are hardcoded to a specific CD drive letter.
However, some are hardcoded to the first CD drive, or to the drive letter they were installed from.

I can confirm this issue with other games.

How to fix missing music in Civilization 2, even when you have a disc in the drive

Kahenraz wrote on 2024-12-17, 16:14:

dr_st wrote on 2024-12-17, 06:33:

Very few (possibly, none) games in the Windows era are hardcoded to a specific CD drive letter.
However, some are hardcoded to the first CD drive, or to the drive letter they were installed from.

I can confirm this issue with other games.

How to fix missing music in Civilization 2, even when you have a disc in the drive

If only I’d seen your post earlier - it would have given me a big clue to the solution to my problem. 😅

Has anyone heard of or been able to use an add-on for Alcohol 120% called YASU? Or A.C.I.D.? It supposedly helps to blacklist any games that are protected by SecuROM or bypasses the disc check. Presumably for games that are a problem with images that complain about the CD not being present. Thought I’d found a workable version, but it looks to only be for Windows NT. Not sure if it was ever available for 98.

I've never found any CD check emulator to work for me. No-CD cracks and fixed EXEs have always been the most reliable and just work. I used to get mine from megagames.com, but they silently removed all of them. A great loss for video game archeology.

Kahenraz wrote on 2024-12-17, 18:19:

I've never found any CD check emulator to work for me. No-CD cracks and fixed EXEs have always been the most reliable and just work. I used to get mine from megagames.com, but they silently removed all of them. A great loss for video game archeology.

I only know of and have used two that I know of, but I won’t mention them here just in case. Cracks that is, not emulators.

It's against the rules to link crack websites here because of piracy. Only mentioned megagames because they no longer serve them there.

Looks like there are still some weird issues with a few games. One that was never an issue before and one that was an issue last time despite using a bin/cue file. For some reason the audio isn't working in Hogs of War and likewise with Quake. Again. Under Windows, but fine under DOS. I guess all I can think of trying is switching the drives back again, use the physical disc, and then switch again.