Copying a game

[babylon5guy]

Hi,
Is there anyway to tell if your game cd is copy protected before you make a coaster?
TIA

[HAL9000]

Sometimes, yes. If you have a game that you know is copyrighted, take a close look at the data side of the CD. Quite often, you will fine a "ring" that appears to make a gap in the data, this is the result of a form of copyright protection. Get yourself a copy of CloneCD for making backups of your games. I have yet to have it fail on any copyright protected material.

[babylon5guy]

Thanks HAL9000, I started making a backup of this game and Nero was putting the data in the buffer and it was taking forever (usually does it in a few seconds)so I thought whats up with this and canceled it, tried again and same thing. This is MS's Pandora's Box, you have to keep the CD in the PC to use it and with games like this I like to use a backup due to all the handleing it gets. I'll try that clonepc.

[HAL9000]

Yea... a lot of MS games have some pretty good copy protections in them, but CloneCD does a good job of getting around that.

[babylon5guy]

Hi Hal9000,
What settings do you use in ClonePC. I've tried cd to cd and cd to image then image to cd and I have two coasters. It gave me a lot of files it couldn't read however it mentioned somewhere this is normal?
I am reading from a Toshiba 32X CDROM to a Creative Labs 8x4x32 burner.

[MoxManiac]

My plextor 12/10/32 refuses to handle copy protected games through clone-cd, apparently because my firmware is too new

[Tiretool]

bab5guy, try using the cd-recorder to read and copy the cd. Sometimes reading from a cd rom to a burner will give you problems.

[whr2206]

I have a sony 12x and I havent found out how to work the thing!!! I can copy music, no games I am stuck! I want to copy the games for lan play with my friends, but dont kno w how either..I have clone cd of some kind

[HAL9000]

I've always just used the default settings to duplicate CD's with CloneCD and have never had a problem. I have started using my CD-RW for making the image instead of my CD-Rom. Some of the CD's have taken several hours to make an image with the CD-Rom while they have only taken a few minutes with the CDRW.

[babylon5guy]

Thanks guys, I'll try just using my burner for the whole process!

[babylon5guy]

Well I'm with MoxManiac I can't make a working copy. I used my burner to make the image and it took a lot longer, and I noticed it changed some settings compared to when I used the CDROM to copy. Like fast write was in software mode instead of hardware mode. I thought it was really going to work this time but no luck. ClonePC sure doesn't give you much instruction. You have to right click on everything to see what it does, which often is not gone into with enough detail.

[Alfie]

Try copying game to hard drive and then burn cd from hard drive,this is what works with my old Ricoh and Nero.

[babylon5guy]

Thanks Alfie I'll give it a try.

[Skinny Boy]

Just an FYI, some stuff needs to have the EXE modified for it to work off the back up copy. Look here , I have found all of my backed up copies, if they don't work straight, will work just fine with these. Mech4 for example, DiabloII as another.

[wedor]

I was able to successfully copy my D2 CD using a Plextor 12/10/32 and CloneCD, I copied the image to the HDD and then burned the CD, it did seem to work better at slower burning speeds.

[babylon5guy]

Hi Skinny Boy,
I'll have to look at that website when I get home, the firewall here at work won't let me go on it. Looks promising though, nothing I've tried so far works.
Thanks

[babylon5guy]

Thanks wedor, I have been copying to the hdd, you use the burner and clonecd to do that right? I haven't seen where you slow it down in clonecd I'll look when I get home.

[pboadle]

You folks might want to look at CloneCD Database that can be found at http://www.mod.myokay.net it might save a few coasters.

[Werewolfdaddy]

This is a little off of the point, but if you want to lan with friends, I found that with Mechwarrior 4 if you start the game with the cd in the drive, then take it out after a it stops spinning, you can still play the game. I did this by accident one day. Apparently, it does the cd check and doesn't bother doing it again. I played for 4 hours after doing that. It is possible, however tedious, that you could do this for every one. Ofcourse, everyone would have to have the same copy installed on their system. It all depends on how much you want to play MW4. Also, I don't support it, but you can get no cd cracks at places like gamecopyworld.com .

[Werewolfdaddy]

Just a word to the newbie: if you do use a copy of the same game to play online, stay away from places like battlenet,etc. They have software that checks cd keys(serial numbers.) If they catch two people or more with the same cd key, they outlaw that cd key from playing again. If you and your friends play online together, make sure you host it yourself; don't go to places like battle net.

Ofcourse, if you like the game, buy the game. It's only one day of work.

[babylon5guy]

Thanks for the tips Werewolfdaddy.

[BassMaster4000]

Hey guys I'm new here. I tried out that sight http://www.mod.myokay.net and I downloaded the CloneCD and the CloneCD Games Database but I'm not sure how to use it. When ever I try to burn it it says failed to read sector #... It might be because they are on the same IDE cable. If it helps I am burning on the fly and the games I'm trying to burn are The Sims and Heroes of Might and Magic III. Thanks

[pboadle]

Originally posted by BassMaster4000 Hey guys I'm new here. I tried out that sight http://www.mod.myokay.net and I downloaded the CloneCD and the CloneCD Games Database but I'm not sure how to use it. When ever I try to burn it it says failed to read sector #... It might be because they are on the same IDE cable. If it helps I am burning on the fly and the games I'm trying to burn are The Sims and Heroes of Might and Magic III. Thanks

it would be best to write an image file then write that image on to cd

[BassMaster4000]

Ok Thanks I will try that.

[babylon5guy]

Hey pboadle thanks for the link to the clonecd database. It was a big help, I finally was abel to make a working copy of that CD.

[Werewolfdaddy]

Could you walk me through it, step by step. I've never tried to do it, before.

[babylon5guy]

Hi Werewolfdaddy,
Did you download the cloneDB? You have to have CloneCD installed, then download cloneDB off the website and install it. Put in the CD you suspect has copy protection on it, start clonedb and scan it with cloneDB. It will tell you what kind of copy protection it has and what settings you use in CloneCD to copy it.
HTH