CD-ROM read time

[ssahl]

When I'm playing some racing games (Nascar 2000 EA sports)
after so many laps through the race at any time (random) the game will freeze and my DVD/CD x40 drive lights up, and you can hear it start to spin, then the game will continue. This tends to happen at the worst possible times. I have DMA selected for this drive, should I uncheck it for games? I tried to make one of those 'virtual CD's' but couldnt get it to work, and I cant tell you how many CD/R disks I wasted trying to copy it. Now that I finally get around to playing it I run into this freeze problem.

[morriswindgate]

Go to the link below and download Daemon's Tool, it will allow you to copy a game CD to a virtual CD-Drive on your hard disk. Then you will not need the CD in the drive. The problem you have is that the game is having to go to the CD to get the information it needs to run.

http://www.daemon-tools.net/main800.htm

[Nuclear Krusader]

I have experienced this problem before. Who is really the culprit: the CD or the CD-ROM drive?

[RJ]

It's possibly a scratched CD or/and a drive with average or poor error correction. Culprit can also be the copy protection. I've read that on various audio cds with new copy protection, a few scratches are enough and the drive's error correction has problems reading the disc (because most of the errors are copy protection). The same drive would do fine if the CD didn't have copy protection.

If this is a backup copy, then it can also be the drive. A friend's CD-ROM drive had problems with reading CD-R. Burner read them fine.

RJ