Civ 3 Complete Error

[SMJ]

I have a legitimate copy of Civ3, and I have registered it, but I can't play it. I can't even start it.

The first thing that happened was I got the "Insert Disk" error, so I figured "Hey, sure. Stick the disk in... no problem." Then I got "CD/DVD emulation software has been detected. Please disable all CD/DVD emulation software and re-start the game." I am not running any emulators. I don't even HAVE any emulators. The closest thing I have to an emulator is Windows XP Drives mapped, and even if I disable all of that, it still won't run. What am I doing wrong?

 

[Padma]

You are being bitten by the extremely aggressive copy-protection scheme used by Atari.

Can you give us a list of your system specs? Obviously, you already run XP, but what patch version, etc.? What drives do you have? Etc.

(FWIW, I run Civ3 in Linux using the Cedega "emulator", and it thinks I have a "debugging tool" enabled when I try to run Conquests. PTW, on the other hand, is fine.... )

 

[SMJ]

I have "Local Disk (C" "Local Disk (D" and "DISK1 (E" under "My Computer". I used to have "Daemon Tools" but I uninstalled it and reinstalled Civ3, but it still doesn't work. I really don't know what specs are relevant...

 

[Padma]

Are you *sure* Daemon Tools is really 100% deleted? Completely gone from the registry, etc.? I have a hunch that might be what Civ is seeing.

 

[SMJ]

I went to "Add/Remove Programs" and it removed it, it shouldn't be detected... do you have instructions on how to completely remove it?

 

[Padma]

Well, "Add/Remove Programs" just runs a script that the program provides. It doesn't necessarily remove all traces of the program, especially from the Registry. If you aren't comfortable messing with the Registry, I would suggest looking around for a good Registry Cleaner. (I can't suggest any, because I haven't even used Windows in almost 2 yrs.)

 

[Turner]

Good place to start.

 

[SMJ]

What is weird is I set it to basic startup (It didn't even load internet/network capability. Not even the firewall... just EXPLORER.EXE and it STILL gave me the error...

 

[Turner]

It's not a program that's running, but rather it searches the registry (I think) to find such things. So if you haven't cleaned the reg, it'll still detect it. I'm not familiar with Daemon Tools, so I'm not sure how to completly remove it.

 

[SMJ]

Fixed it. I had to uninstall CloneCD as well.

 

[Padma]

Yeah, the copy-protection looks for *any* tools that could be used to pirate the CD, and refuses to run the game if it finds any.

 

[SMJ]

I don't like that they make you buy the CD, and uninstall software that you might have bought, to play the game... but I didn't buy them. They are free

 

[Turner]

Look at it from their point of view....they're trying to keep people from stealing from them. They're a little aggressive about it, yes....