Game running troubles

[JoshexProxy]

figured someone here might have come across this before.

I downloaded a really old game, it's CD images are .mds and .mdf, I tried alcohol 52% and daemon tools with varying degrees of failure. I used Magic ISO reader and unpacked the files manually, then installed from the files.

Everything was seeming to go ok until I opened the installed game and selected "Start New Game" it brought up a window saying "please insert a product CD in to your CD-ROM drive to continue"

I tried making a virtual CD rom drive with the game image, it ignored it. I have not tried burning it to a disk yet but I think that might not matter.

I have no CD drive, only a DVD/CD drive, and the game is really old I think it's 16 or 32 bit (I've read people's comments claiming it's both) so it may not like DVD drives either, not sure.

anyways, does anyone have any expertise on this? any help would be great.

[Harlequin565]

I've had this problem with Championship Manager 2001. I found that I could only mount the ISO in the virtual drive when I had the game open and waiting. (Using Virtual Clone Drive) I couldn't mount the ISO unless CM.exe was running.

Sounds like a long shot, but hey ho. Had to install a VM of Win98 to get Magic The Gathering running! The lengths we go to to get old stuff running again eh?

Good luck!

[FlyingCarcass]

Which game is it anyway?

Have you tried DOSBox?
Perhaps the game is available somewhere patched to run on modern OSes? Perhaps GOG?

[JoshexProxy]

Harlequin; thanks, I just tried virtual clone drive but still the same result, keeps asking for the disk, I have it running in XP compatibility mode, I'm not sure if there's a win 98 compatibility mode, I'll go try.

FlyingCarcass: have not tried DOSBox yet, it's not a dos game trying to run indiana jones and the infernal machine, I have a N64 copy at home but that does no good on my computer. yes I tried a rom, wont work, the game uses graphics capabilities the emulators don't know how to handle so it's just a blank screen.

this is the downside of traveling, all my favorite games aren't here.

I'll try win 98 compatibility mode and try DOSBox, at the worst I'll have to wait till november to burn it to a CD (left all my blank CDs in Scotland and wont be allowed to buy one by GF ruling).

[The Fifth Horseman]

DOSBox will be useless. Try Virtual Box.

[JoshexProxy]

DOSBox will be useless. Try Virtual Box.

was hoping to avoid OS emulation but it most likely will work, I'll try it later I'll need to find a way to get the install files for windows xp or 98. I have an XP disk in the USA, but that's no help here.

looks like I'm back to burning a CD as my next course of action. lucas arts games are apparently sensitive to the difference between a real CD and an emulated one, reason being is from what I'm reading the game must load files from the disk such as sounds and cut-scenes, it's hard coded into the game image as an additional copy protection.