(I searched for copy protection, .iso and several other related terms, didn't find what I was looking for)
Hi
I own a legal copy of "Dungeon Keeper 2" and "Nox" which are both awesome games everyone should try out sometime (sadly by download, as they are no longer for sale anywhere), and I would like to make them into .iso so I can play the games without the CD and if the CDs break I can still enjoy the games. The problem is that they have some old copy-protection (DK2 has SafeDisc, Nox I don't know) and I've tried Daemon Tools Lite, Alcohol 120/52 and several other programs to bypass this but none of them has worrked. Any help would be greatly apreciated!
(Both games are over 11 years old, if these discs break I have no way of getting new ones)
Have you tried CloneCD ? I have saved alot of shit that way you just simply burn a new disc (I am not exactly an expert what it basically does its "cloning" the protection so it appers the same way on your copy of disc)
Why don't you just pirate it like any normal person, Nobody cares if it's illegal if you 1.won't get caught 2. isn't actually doing anything morally wrong pretty much every legal game i own i have also downloaded from pirate sites for convenience.
On May 02 2012 12:58 nttea wrote: Why don't you just pirate it like any normal person, Nobody cares if it's illegal if you 1.won't get caught 2. isn't actually doing anything morally wrong pretty much every legal game i own i have also downloaded from pirate sites for convenience.
Idk, I guess I could, but if I can make one myself it would (for some weird reason) be better. I think it's because those games are "sacred" to me because I grew up playing them and I have a shitton of hours and fun with them.
On May 02 2012 12:21 YosHGo wrote: Have you tried CloneCD ? I have saved alot of shit that way you just simply burn a new disc (I am not exactly an expert what it basically does its "cloning" the protection so it appers the same way on your copy of disc)
Yeah, I tried it, I think it sort-of worked but the log told me it got a bunch of errors and so on and it took forever, I just cancelled it.
On May 02 2012 12:58 nttea wrote: Why don't you just pirate it like any normal person, Nobody cares if it's illegal if you 1.won't get caught 2. isn't actually doing anything morally wrong pretty much every legal game i own i have also downloaded from pirate sites for convenience.
Idk, I guess I could, but if I can make one myself it would (for some weird reason) be better. I think it's because those games are "sacred" to me because I grew up playing them and I have a shitton of hours and fun with them.
On May 02 2012 12:21 YosHGo wrote: Have you tried CloneCD ? I have saved alot of shit that way you just simply burn a new disc (I am not exactly an expert what it basically does its "cloning" the protection so it appers the same way on your copy of disc)
Yeah, I tried it, I think it sort-of worked but the log told me it got a bunch of errors and so on and it took forever, I just cancelled it.
I have to admit that while my nostalgia for these games is sacred, the ownership of Bullfrog titles by EA games is an insult to me, and any respect that I had for the developers from Bullfrog is not transferable to EA.
"Well, Dungeon Keeper 2 only has Safedisk 1 as CD Copy Protection. I'm sure Daemon tools has no difficulty with this protection. Just make sure you turned Safedisk emulation on ( i think you dont even have to ). Its not the program, its definitly the image that causes the problem. If you have the original cd, just make a new image file with Alcohol 120%. Its quite easy even to create a perfect copy of Dungeon Keeper 2 with Safedisc 1 properties with alcohol. :wink: "
I agree on the fact that you might want to pirate it. After all, you already own the original (so you payed for the intelectual property). Also for so old games, finding support might be hard, but some dedicated pirates already make the game win 7 compatible :D.
Go to gamecopyworld, this site has instructions for every single game on how to make a 1:1 copy, depending on the protection. The best way is still to make a copy then to use a crack.
On May 02 2012 18:00 Tanukki wrote: gog.com or pirate
Discs tend to go bad after all those years anyway, can't count on them.
I re-bought a ton of games that i owned on disc from gog.com just so i don't have to bother about CDs and stuff anymore. Awesome trouble saver and not that expensive either, especially if you just one 1-2 specific titles... you then have to browse the site with closed eyes though, otherwise you end up buying a lot more than you wanted though, i... uhm... *cough* heard.
If you don't want to spend the money, sorry, can't help you :/
Can take any folder or directory and make an .ISO file out of it. Just set it to look at whatever drive letter your optical drive it set to and it will take all the files and data on the disc and put it into an ISO. All you have to do then is mount it with something like Daemon tools or Virtual Clone Drive.
Don't know that it will work with new games, but definetly will work with DK2.
Can take any folder or directory and make an .ISO file out of it. Just set it to look at whatever drive letter your optical drive it set to and it will take all the files and data on the disc and put it into an ISO. All you have to do then is mount it with something like Daemon tools or Virtual Clone Drive.
Don't know that it will work with new games, but definetly will work with DK2.
-edit: also, guys don't advocate piracy. :/
So basicly you make an Image file from a game folder? That's pretty awesome.
Can take any folder or directory and make an .ISO file out of it. Just set it to look at whatever drive letter your optical drive it set to and it will take all the files and data on the disc and put it into an ISO. All you have to do then is mount it with something like Daemon tools or Virtual Clone Drive.
Don't know that it will work with new games, but definetly will work with DK2.
-edit: also, guys don't advocate piracy. :/
So basicly you make an Image file from a game folder? That's pretty awesome.
Yeah, it just makes an ISO file containing exactly what's on the disc. And yes, it is pretty awesome, best file app on source forge IMO.
Can take any folder or directory and make an .ISO file out of it. Just set it to look at whatever drive letter your optical drive it set to and it will take all the files and data on the disc and put it into an ISO. All you have to do then is mount it with something like Daemon tools or Virtual Clone Drive.
Don't know that it will work with new games, but definetly will work with DK2.
On May 04 2012 05:21 achristes wrote: Still didn't work, I can't believe this old game with an outdated as shit copy-protection is so much trouble to break!
I can see from there that the nox cd also has safedisc protection.
On May 02 2012 13:48 achristes wrote: Yeah, I tried it, I think it sort-of worked but the log told me it got a bunch of errors and so on and it took forever, I just cancelled it.
I've had this problem before when ripping safedisc protected games. Daemon Tools has a feature that solved the problem for me called fastdump. The way it works is as follows:
1) make sure Daemon Tools is running in the background 2) install game using original disc 3) start game with original disc (you just need to get past the initial loading screens into the main menu) 4) exit the game 5) rip the image using program of your choice, preferrably something like Alcohol or CloneCD 6) mount the created image
When the rip program gets to the stage where it would normally spend ages with lots of position read errors, it should now pass very quickly through this phase and start ripping the disc proper.
Personally i use Daemon Tools lite to mount the images, and Alcohol 52% to do the ripping, but that's just because they're both free, and they're the setup I've been using for years now.
Is it still piracy when you own the game? I remember all the disclaimers on the old NES rom download sites said to only download the rom if you already own a copy of the game.
Its been years since i stopped copying games, but if my memory serves me right, .iso images can't store information related to copy protection. Thats why you are unable to create a working image.
Go with .mdf/.mds (media descriptor file or smthing like that) and you'll be fine. I used Alcohol many times to back up games without using cracks so it should work
Indeed, considering you've actually bought the CD, you might as well just download a pirated copy and save yourself all this trouble. It might not feel right morally because you're using a copy others use to avoid spending any money, but you've contributed to the developers, so there's no reason to feel iffy about it.
On May 04 2012 09:22 MyNameIsAlex wrote: Its been years since i stopped copying games, but if my memory serves me right, .iso images can't store information related to copy protection. Thats why you are unable to create a working image.
Go with .mdf/.mds (media descriptor file or smthing like that) and you'll be fine. I used Alcohol many times to back up games without using cracks so it should work
Most earlier games basically just checked certain files on the disc when the game booted to verify it was actually the game disc. For the most part, the "copy protection" just prevented legal versions of certain burning software, like Roxio, from making copies of the disc. For 99% of games from before like 2006ish, .ISO-ing the disc and mounting it on a virtual drive or to a virtual machine works perfectly fine.
I just checked my external, and I actually haven't made an iso of my DKII disc and thus have never tested it. It's possible that bullfrog used some more complex copy protection than most others. But I've tested this successfully with a number of games, it does work.
On May 04 2012 09:22 MyNameIsAlex wrote: Its been years since i stopped copying games, but if my memory serves me right, .iso images can't store information related to copy protection. Thats why you are unable to create a working image.
Go with .mdf/.mds (media descriptor file or smthing like that) and you'll be fine. I used Alcohol many times to back up games without using cracks so it should work
Most earlier games basically just checked certain files on the disc when the game booted to verify it was actually the game disc. For the most part, the "copy protection" just prevented legal versions of certain burning software, like Roxio, from making copies of the disc. For 99% of games from before like 2006ish, .ISO-ing the disc and mounting it on a virtual drive or to a virtual machine works perfectly fine.
I just checked my external, and I actually haven't made an iso of my DKII disc and thus have never tested it. It's possible that bullfrog used some more complex copy protection than most others. But I've tested this successfully with a number of games, it does work.
Copy protections far older than windows 95 already used the "check for specific errors on the disk" (Floppy and CD) stuff that was hard to copy back then. However, CloneCD or similar should be able to copy that anyways, if not, maybe the disk is already damaged from basically old age.
On May 04 2012 09:22 MyNameIsAlex wrote: Its been years since i stopped copying games, but if my memory serves me right, .iso images can't store information related to copy protection. Thats why you are unable to create a working image.
Go with .mdf/.mds (media descriptor file or smthing like that) and you'll be fine. I used Alcohol many times to back up games without using cracks so it should work
+1 for this. Just had a quick look through my old backups and 90% of them are all .mdf/.mds files, pretty sure the reason was something to do with .isos struggling with more advanced copy protection types.
On May 04 2012 14:11 Morfildur wrote: Copy protections far older than windows 95 already used the "check for specific errors on the disk" (Floppy and CD) stuff that was hard to copy back then. However, CloneCD or similar should be able to copy that anyways, if not, maybe the disk is already damaged from basically old age.
I don't remember copy protection being that prevalent back then - I used to just literally copy and paste the CD into a place on my harddrive then install it from there. Only started having trouble with that approach around the time win98 came out. DK I and AOE 1 I remember in particular having nothing stopping me copying them across manually. Then again I was only like 10 at the time so there could well have been a lot of copy protected games out there that I wasn't exposed to
On May 04 2012 21:51 achristes wrote: Btw, this is the error(s) I get when trying to use Alcohol 120% with reading speed at 2x and SafeDisc selected. + Show Spoiler +
Yeah that looks kinda familliar. Did you have the options to skip reading errors and fast skip error blocks turned on? And were you using the fastdump method I mentioned earlier?
EPT
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