How to run Civ4 on a computer without DVD-ROM-reader?

[pareriksson]

I just bought Civilization 4: Complete and installed it on my laptop (Windows 7). The problem is that my laptop is very light and does not have a DVD-ROM-drive. During installation I solved this problem by using another PC with DVD-ROM-drive, and shared this drive on the network. By doing this I could install the game on my laptop.

Now when I try to run Civ4 directly on my laptop I get the error message "Please insert the correct DVD-ROM, select OK and restart application".

How can I solve this problem? I don't have DVD-ROM-drive to put the DVD into on my laptop!

 

[Yared]

Since you own the game, isn't it legal for you to make images of it and load it with something like DaemonTools?

 

[Furiey]

Welcome to CFC!

Is guess that this is the European version of Complete, without Colonization or you would not be asking this question.

If you patch Beyond the Sword to 3.19 you will no longer need the disc to play that. Download the patch from here and as you have W7 install it by right clicking on the .exe and choosing run as administrator.

You will still need the disc if you want to play the vanilla game or the warlords scenarios but as BTS is the most complete version it should not be too much of a problem as you are likely to be playing BTS for most (or all) of the time.

 

[KalElBCN]

So... is it impossible to play basic Civ IV on a notebook without DVD, just from a copy of it at a USB pendrive? I could install it without problems, it's the playing aspect that is stopped as the game searches the DVD drive (which just isn't there).

 

[Yared]

Assuming that you bought it, you could crack it.

 

[KalElBCN]

Yes, I bought it, I have the original box, the tech map, everything. I checked the civiv.com website, but I couldn't find nothing there...