Hey, I've just purchased my DVD copy of Civ 4. After I installed it, i tried to play the game but it came up with this message:

Cannot Locate the CD-ROM / Please Insert the Correct CD-ROM

2K Games doesnt offer any help on this problem unless I call. But considering I live in Australia I dont want to make a $40 phone call..
I've only got one DVD so it can't be the wrong one.

I've looked through previous threads but the previous thread about this problem was more of a whinge session than a support session.

Can anyone help me? All ideas are welcome
Cheers

hi and welcome to civfanatics :)

there are a couple of cases that i've encountered, hope these can help you solve your problem.

1) Using multiple drives - If you install the game from say cd drive E for the first time, but tries to run the game from another cd drive F, it may not work coz the registry seems to keep track of the install drive. Solution - Run in drive E.

2) The game uses safedisc 4 as game protection. Certain optical drives with their out-of-the-factory firmware may not be able to read the disc properly and thus safedisc fails to complete. Solution - Update your drive's firmware.

3) If you have CD imaging programs such as Alcohol 120%, then even if you did not try to run the game via an image from such programs, safedisc might not be really happy anyway. (like, i can get Monty to Pleased and yet he can still go WAR with me in an untimely fashion :crazyeye: :mad: ). Solution - Uninstall such programs completely, removing even those registry settings if prompted to.

-yours-

Thanks smurfish.

Unfortunately I tried all of those things and it still comes up with the same message. I had daemon tools installed but i completely removed it, rebooted. downloaded new firmware and installed it.

Do you know if nero affects the safedisc program at all?

as far as i know from myself and my friends, nero 6 (the version i'm using) does not affect safedisc protected games, wonder which version are you using?

also to add, if you have say 2 optical drives, and so you installed from drive E, updated firmware of drive E and still face the prob, uninstall civ4 *completely* and install from *the other* drive, check and see if game runs, if not update firmware for this drive and try. You know, mix 'n' match kinda stuffs..

you can also try the game disc on another PC's optical drives to see if the prob lies on the disc or the drives.

Hope you can start enjoying the game soon :)

I had to uninstall my DLA software (from Sonic, rebranded by IBM) to get the DRM stuff to play nice. Once I did, no problems.

To see if you have DLA installed, right click on your CD/DVD drive. If you see a DLA tab, you've got it.

Not sure if this applies for you or not...

I get that message sometimes on my laptop when I start. My Dell's CD/DVD drive is modular so it can swap out and allow me to put in, say, a secondary battery.

I've found that if make that swap after machine startup and then try to put the DVD drive (CIV disk rarely comes out of that!) back in and then play, it will not recognize the disk as correct and I get that same message. I have to restart the machine to get it to recognize the disk again. Not a big deal, but a nuisance that did scare me the first time it happened.

Hi, I was about to start a new thread, then found this one. I have the same error message appear just now, but I have had the game and played it many times in the past few weeks.
What happened was My E: drive is screwed, I cant even get the disc tray to open. Thus, I installed to my D: drive. I played it fine for a few weeks, come home today, and I am getting this error message. I would just reinstall, but my disc 2 is stuck in my E: drive :cry: . I am completely cpu illiterate, any simple ways to fix this (get my E; drive to open, mess with the ini file to load from D: drive, anything that doesnt involve me taking my cpu somewhere...)?

Please help I NEED my fix, literally and figuratively.

i had this problem a couple of times. apparently the cds suck. take it back and try again.

Hi, I was about to start a new thread, then found this one. I have the same error message appear just now, but I have had the game and played it many times in the past few weeks.
What happened was My E: drive is screwed, I cant even get the disc tray to open. Thus, I installed to my D: drive. I played it fine for a few weeks, come home today, and I am getting this error message. I would just reinstall, but my disc 2 is stuck in my E: drive :cry: . I am completely cpu illiterate, any simple ways to fix this (get my E; drive to open, mess with the ini file to load from D: drive, anything that doesnt involve me taking my cpu somewhere...)?

Please help I NEED my fix, literally and figuratively.

have you tried the manual eject? you know, that small 'lil hole on the front of the drive where you push a pin in and the tray can then be manually ejected?

Hey, sorry about the late reply. I use Nero 6 aswell. And I checked and my cd doesn't use DLA Software. I've got an LG DVDRAM 4x DVD Burner

I might have to replace the DVD and try again.

Try using the program Curerom (search Google from it) it fixes Securom problems. The game doesn't recognize my disc too and that utility fixed it. (just be sure to download the latest version and use the "anti-blacklist" feature). Sometimes when uninstalling the daemon-tools/ Alcohol they leave some registry files, and who knows in what skewed way Securom is scanning your computer.

do the thing smurfish suggested too
have you tried the manual eject? you know, that small 'lil hole on the front of the drive where you push a pin in and the tray can then be manually ejected?

-Great Wizard

Just surfed by to say thanks for maintaining this resource. Have been getting the Insert Correct CD for some weeks but decided to wait on a patch.

I have the DVD edition (it was all that was available in the stores last year :rolleyes: )

Had major problems installing the game and finally suceeded by creating a disc image on the Windows partition and installing from that. Game ran fine until after I took a couple of weeks off. During that couple of weeks I did a lot of CD burning and must've gotten so irritated by the "use the groovy Sonic DLA" pop-ups that I enabled it. Never occured to me that it would be causing the Civ4 error.

Fixed in an instant. :)

Hey Cakewalk, I started a thread yesterday after missing yours from March. Yep, I had the same problem... CANNOT LOCATE THE CD ROM. I'll tell ya, as much as I like Firaxis, it is absolutely infuriating to have this problem! Some of you are very adept at figuring out what to do to solve the problem, but for many of us, it is just a real source of aggravation! This game is my Spare Time project and with so little of that, it's exasperating to have to spend time surfing thru threads hoping to find an answer, just I can play the game! Still, thank heaven's for the Civ Fan Forum. I DO have NERO also. It came on the laptop when I bought it a year ago. Have NEVER used it. I am damned tempted to just Remove it if it'll finally allow me to get the game going!

If anyone reads this, could you please explain how to check if one has a DLA installed? Above it says "To see if you have DLA installed, right click on your CD/DVD drive. If you see a DLA tab, you've got it." Sorry, where do I right-click? I guess (but am not sure) that direction means on the DVD/CD-ROM line that comes up when I bring up the Device Manager. When I right-click on that, I get a choice of SCAN FOR HARDWARE CHANGES (which yields nothing) or PROPERTIES (which brings up a box with one tab: GENERAL and nothing else in it). Am I doing it correctly?

Go the "My Computer" on your desktop and rightclick your cd/dvd drive there.

OK crunch. Right-clicked, saw Tabs for General, AutoPlay, Hardware, Sharing and Recording. No DLA, so I assume that is not the problem.

This morning, I really thought I might have the problem fixed. I downloaded the new CureROM 2. I found a program that would open and run it (CureROM uses a .RAR extension). After installing, used it's Wizard to create a new profile. On the Application Settings screen, I dragged over the Civ 4 Application, which put the civilization.exe complete line into the application line. I did have the box about Anti-Blacklist ENABLED. The next step was a default "I do not want to use and Virtual CD/DVD ROM Software" which I kept and hit Next. That step gave me a shortcut name and let me put a new icon on desktop. The next step for profile settings I just accepted the .crp they set up for the save location, hit SAVE and all the choices turned Green... surely a good sign. Clicked FINISH. Double-clicked my new icon, which I called Civilization4 Cured. Unfortunately, after a minute of whirling, I got the same CANNOT LOCATE THE CD ROM. ARRGGHHHHHH!!!! Anyone know if I could have a CureROM setting wrong? Anyone know if my NERO v6.3.1.20 could be the culprit? Geez this is frustrating.....

3) If you have CD imaging programs such as Alcohol 120%, then even if you did not try to run the game via an image from such programs, safedisc might not be really happy anyway. (like, i can get Monty to Pleased and yet he can still go WAR with me in an untimely fashion :crazyeye: :mad: ). Solution - Uninstall such programs completely, removing even those registry settings if prompted to.

-yours-

Does safedisc affect the in-game behaviour then? I thought that was a Fade trick.

to:cakewalk. How come the error is insert the CDROM when you bought a dvdcopy? Shoudn't it say insert the DVDROM, like mine? Are you sure it says CDROM? Coz mine says DVDROM, and I've an excuse why it diesn't work yet...I still don't have a dvdrom drive :( gonna buy one maybe tomorrow. Anyway, hope you get your game running soon ;)

I too get the same message but I get it after many sucsessful playings of CIV4...

I shut down the game two days ago after saving mid game and have not been able to start CIV since then... I get that darn message I try to start and have no idea why....

I could understand if I had changed settings, or installed new programs, but I tried restarting after just a few minutes and got this message....

No, I don't have any programs like Alc 120% or anything like that...

Help!

I'm having the same problem described above. I'm attempting to run the game via Parallels on Mac OS X; installation went fine and the autoplay even appears when I insert the disc, but then the "loading" screen runs for a while and concludes that, oops, the autoplay must have been magic because it's the wrong CD after all. I've tried un- and re-installing the whole game, CureROM etc., but no luck. Any other suggestions?

I was surprised when I got thru to TAKE 2 800# tollfree support quickly. I had an agent who seemed quite knowledgable. He was familiar with the problem of the "Cannot Find the CD" and had me do several checks. The first few were, as expected, diagnostic (dxdiag and msconfig) Then he had me start making changes, removing all start-up programs, for example, and after that right-clicking on the CIV 4 icon, going to PROPERTIES, then Compatability tab, and playing with all kinds of combinations. Unfortunately nothing worked. He did see that my CD ROM driver was from late 2004, likewise my NVIDIA 6800 GO driver. Because it is a laptop, I cannot download an update from the internet, which is a pain. I don't understand why nvidia cannot have it at their site, but I guess there must be a reason. So at his suggestion I need to get to my laptop manufacturer to see if there is a newer driver for these two. He said that there is a "chance" that would solve the problem. Would be happy to hear if anyone else fixed theirs in the same manner.

As for graphics driver, have you checked http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/ ?

I too get the same message but I get it after many sucsessful playings of CIV4...

I shut down the game two days ago after saving mid game and have not been able to start CIV since then... I get that darn message I try to start and have no idea why....

I could understand if I had changed settings, or installed new programs, but I tried restarting after just a few minutes and got this message....

No, I don't have any programs like Alc 120% or anything like that...

Help!

Same issue here. This is just wrong I bought Civ this week and I know that returning software is impossible. It looks like the problem is yet to have a cure. I just feel so hopeless...

Fixed thru the amazing uses of normal things.

I restarted and ran a Virus scan a zipped folder scan and a deframent and amazingly it worked. Don't know what I really did to fix it but maybe this may just help everyone frustrated with this bug.

Just a reminder, folks - discussion of piracy (including "how-to", recommendations to do so, and admitting that you have) is not allowed on this forum.

Hey guys i just got a copy, I do not have a DLA, Please tell me what to do,.... my game verion is the base 1.0 version and upgrading to 1.64 also does not work. I have a Windows Vista and i have put the compatibility to Win XP SP2.... I have a DVD edition of the game

Help WHat to i do????

I have a different problem that's still kinda related I think. I just got a new computer and it's quite a good computer or so I'm told. It'll run some games perfectly (Rome: Total War, Rise and Fall, CNC3) but some games it won't recognise the disc at all, so I can't even install it, (Civ 4). Any suggestions?

I have a different problem that's still kinda related I think. I just got a new computer and it's quite a good computer or so I'm told. It'll run some games perfectly (Rome: Total War, Rise and Fall, CNC3) but some games it won't recognise the disc at all, so I can't even install it, (Civ 4). Any suggestions?

this sounds like a problem with your disc drive - does it not recognize that there is a disc in the drive?

welcome to the posting side of cfc :)

I dunno. We put in another dic drive to my computer from my old computer which played everything fine, but for some reason my computer didn't like it and so it didn't work. It doesn't seem to think that there is anything in the drive. When I click the Disc Drive thing in My Computer it ejects my disc drive and says please insert a disc, which gets rly annoying after a while lol. And thx btw.