latest safedisc games crashing to desktop

[Breadtruck]

I have had the same problem with Stronghold, Ghost Recon, Battle Realms and Operation F'point gold edition where even the original games did not work on my computer until I used a hacked exe from gamecopyworld.

The game installs fine however when you start the executable it comes up with the loader window and then drops back to the desktop. This is very frustrating as the even the backup copy of Stronghold I made using the "AWS" option in CloneCD worked like a charm on my friends computer.

I am running an a7M266 Athlon 1.4GHz, GeForce3 etc (all high specs) on 98SE. I was wondering if it could be the CD-rom and reader. The CD-reader is 40x Mitsubishi DiamondData and the writer is LG 8080B so they are both older types.

Any help greatly appreciated? Older safedisc V2 games work fine but there must be something in the newer versions kicking even original installations back to desktop.

Battle Realms recognised a problem with this which is rectified in the current patch but to date no other company seems interested.

[crispy]

Seems to be a problem with safedisc ver 2.40.10 onwards, as this first appeared (to my knowledge) with Max Payne. A patch was released very quickly to address this problem.
It would seem a problem with sd2 and certain (albeit older) cdoms, and the drives' ability to read the weak sectors. Some have said this is down to macrovulsion pushing the boundries of the cdrom orange book standards too far, so that older drives can't cope.

In the end, other than patching/unwrapping the safedisc2 loader, you're best bet is to email the support team at the relevant companies. Or, take the games back and complain.

You are unfortunately one of the unlucky peeps who Macrovision doesn't mind f()cking over.

[celtic_druid]

Generally when an original SD game doesn't run it is due to blacklisted software being installed on the machine. If you have any tools that aid in the playing of SafeDisc2 backups, such as insektors, playbackup, etc. then try uninstalling them.

[Lil Half Swell]

I don't think it's necessarily a problem with 'older' drives because I couldn't get my original The Sims: Hot Date to work on my fairly-modern system. It wouldn't play from either my NEC DVD or my Sony CDRW. But the same CD worked fine on my neices 'ancient' system.

I agree with the person that said to take the game back. Maybe if enough people let them know that this sh!t don't work right, they might ease up on the protection....but I doubt it.

Using a crack was the only way I could get my legitimately bought game to play.

[podunkviller]

If you think this is bad, wait til the springtime when most audio cd's are protected, and you cant play them at all on cd-roms