Cannot locate CD-Rom (Not the same as other people's issue)

[LeperColony]

Civ 4 is now telling me that it cannot locate the CD-Rom, even though the disc is in there. I have searched and seen that some other people had a similar problem, but their solutions didn't work and the facts in my case are different. Here's what happened:

I have had Civ 4 on my computer for a long time, and I have played many times without complication. Then I took a break from Civ for a few months. Now that I'm trying to play it again, this error has popped up.

I have Xp, not Vista, and I'm not running Civ off an emulation like Alcohol 120 or Daemon Tools. Everything is exactly as it was a few months ago when Civ worked fine.

Any suggestions?

 

[Rono_]

I had the same problem a few years back with Battlefield 2. I got around it was by attempting to open the .exe immediately following the CD entering the drive.

As in, eject the disc, leave the tray open, highlight the Civ4.exe, inject the tray and as soon as it closes hit enter.

If this doesn't work you may want to consider using an emulator, in this scenario it is not illegal as you own the game and are simply emulating for convenience and down-right usability.

 

[LeperColony]

I tried Rono's suggestion, but it didn't work. Finally I was driven to completely uninstall the game and re-install. Both the uninstall and re-installs worked fine. However, once the re-install was complete, it wouldn't let me play. It still gives the "cannot locate cd-rom" error message.

This is really frustrating as everything worked fine a few months ago.

 

[LeperColony]

Sorry to keep bumping this, but any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Riffraffselbow]

Sounds like your disk got scratched. Sucks, but there's not much you can do about it.

If it's kosher on these forums, I'd recommend getting a NOCD crack. You can find them fairly quickly with google. I'll refrain from recommending any specific sites, but as always with that type of thing, be careful as some sites just distribute trojans.

 

[LeperColony]

If my disc were scratched, and that's the reason that Civ won't recognize it, wouldn't that have prevented me from properly re-installing the game?

 

[ori]

did you try all of this:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/228985

 

[LeperColony]

I have now tried many of those solutions, and none of them worked. I did notice something peculiar though. Under HKEY_CURRENT_USER Software, there is no folder for either Firaxis or 2k games. There was a Civ 4 folder under Firaxis in HKEY_USERS, but there was no "FIRSTRUN" section.

How can there not be a folder under Current User, if the game was correctly and completely installed?

 

[Freak6010]

I'm getting the same problem. It says cannot locate cd-rom and that I have to put in the correct cd-rom. I too re-installed but othing happened. It still says it's wrong

 

[ori]

welcome to cfc

did you try the stuff I linked to before?

 

[LeperColony]

Update: Months later, still same problem.

Just this last week I completely uninstalled the game and re-installed it. I have Civ Gold, which works find. But when I add BTS, the install completes alright, but then when I try to play I get the "cannot locate CD-ROM" again. I tried to install BTS with two different copies, and I've tried all four BTS discs, even though that is unnecessary because I know that Disc 1 is the right one, as it once worked many, many months ago.

I've tried the suggestions linked by Ori earlier in this thread. Am I just screwed now?

 

[ori]

patch to 3.19 - that removes the disc check for BtS