Play Game with no CD

[PlantATree]

What is the easiest way to play games on my computer without having to insert the CD? I get sick of keeping all of these CDs close at hand. Plus will running a game off of my hard drive speed it up? I imagine it would. One game I play a lot is Red Alert II and it requires the game. It loads files off of the cd each time I play. I would think it would load much faster if it pulled the files off of the hard drive.

So, any help would be appreciated. I see mention of Daemon Tools, but not sure if this is what I am looking for. I would just like to copy the CDs to my hard drive and play without inserting cd into drive.

 

[Slogun]

You can't just copy your cd to your hard drive and play it...

What you want is alcohol 120% which creates a virtual cd image on your hard drive(daemon tools). Not sure if it speeds things up, perhaps.

 

[PlantATree]

I am going to give Alcohol 52% since I don't need to make copies of my disks. Is there by any chance free software out there that does the same thing? If Alcohol works and does what I want then I may buy it.

 

[Crusty]

Daemon Tools (free and better)

 

[Cawchy87]

http://megagames.com/gcracks.html

Has no-cd cracks for every game out there. It is so much nicer using these insted of having a pile of CD's beside your computer.

Enjoy

 

[marmasatt]

Doesn't "virtual drive" do this too? You can create up to 18 Virtual drives or something. I just got this with my video card. Been thinking about installing.........

 

[KoolDrew]

You would need a no-cd crack

 

[PlantATree]

I installed the trial version of Alcohol 52%. When I go to make a copy to my hard drive I get a bunch of Disk Read Errors. I have a feeling I need to select the datatype from the drop down menu, but I have no idea what I need to select. I am trying this with my Red Alert II disk.

 

[Allio]

That's Safedisc 2. The read errors are completely normal - they're a part of the protection. Let it keep reading, they'll eventually finish and the disc will be read as normal.

You can use ClonyXXL to determine which protection is being used on a particular disc, and then select the corresponding type in Alcohol.

 

[imported_JeReMY]

www.gamecopyworld.com

 

[PlasticJesus]

Originally posted by: marmasatt

Doesn't "virtual drive" do this too? You can create up to 18 Virtual drives or something. I just got this with my video card. Been thinking about installing.........

It can do that. Those images sure can take up a lot of space, though.

Used to use VirtualCD for Jane's F-16 'cause no one ever made a crack for it.

 

[PlantATree]

I selected Safedisc 2 like Allio said and it worked perfectly. I was able to mount the created image and the game runs great. It does speed up the loading of the game, especially during online playing. I haven't tried any of my other games yet, but can you mount multiple images or do you have to go into the program and select whichever game you want to play? Also, does Daemon Tools do the same thing? Alcohol seems to work great but not sure I want to pay for the program. What happens after the trial period? Do the images that I created stop working?

I understand why the game producers do this but this is a real pain in the you know what for people like myself that pay the money for a game but have to put up with the trouble of swaping cds and reduced game performance while waiting for stuff to load from the cd.