Witchaven without CD

Crudux_Cruo · Post by **Crudux_Cruo** » Wed Oct 08, 2008 3:39 am

I recently re-purchased a copy of Witchaven to relive some childhood memories (on an old Win98 machine I got hold of).

After installing it, I realised that the CD needs to be in the drive for the game to run. While I do have the CD, I really wanted to avoid doing this to keep the game (and others) in perfect condition (all my old copies of these games got scratched to hell long ago).

Basically I was just wondering if anyone knows of a way to get this to run without the CD in the drive? I've tried copying the contents of the CD directly to my HDD, which didn't work. After installing, a file is generated called "CD.DAT", which when opened contains the drive letter used on install. I tried changing this from D to C, but with no avail. I've also been unable to find any kind of fixed .exe online.

Is there a way to do this, or am I going to have to copy the original CD or create an ISO?

Post by **dosraider** » Wed Oct 08, 2008 4:55 am

Make an image of it and mount the image in daemon tools.
http://www.daemon-tools.cc/dtcc/download.php

Or CloneCD, or NERO, or ...... whatever that can handle an CD image.
Maybe you'll have to change drive letters or reinstall the game, depends ....

BTW, if it's a mixCD (DATA+AUDIO) you will best create a BIN/CUE and mount that, not all ISO software can work with mixCDs.

Post by **emmzee** » Wed Oct 08, 2008 10:08 am

Yup, as dosraider said, make an ISO of the game to copy it to your hard drive, then mount it using a mounting tool.

To make the ISO you can use ISO Recorder:
http://isorecorder.alexfeinman.com/isorecorder.htm

And to mount it, I prefer MagicDisc:
http://www.magiciso.com/tutorials/miso- ... erview.htm

Then once it's mounted as a virtual drive in Windows you can then mount it again in DOSBox and you're set to play.

Post by **dosraider** » Wed Oct 08, 2008 11:35 am

There is of course still the possibility to use imgmount in dosbox, but as witchaven is a pretty demanding game dosbox will need something better than a W98 PC ......

Crudux_Cruo · Post by **Crudux_Cruo** » Thu Oct 09, 2008 3:34 am

Thanks for your help guys. I made an ISO of the CD (which isn't mixed mode), and after a bit of wrangling with Windows, got it working perfectly.

I had to track down an old version of Daemon tools that was actually compatible with Win98, then I had to update Windows installer to get the thing installed. THEN it turns out Witchaven's stupid CD check automatically looks in your first CD drive for the CD, then gives up when it's not there. I switched the virtual drive to D:, and my real CD drive to E: and then it worked fine. Apparently the CD.DAT file serves absolutely no purpose whatsoever.

To clarify, I got the Win98 PC to run later (mainly build-engine) DOS games that don't run too well in DOSBox on my XP PC, while I use DOSBox for older games that run much better in it.

Post by **dosraider** » Thu Oct 09, 2008 4:59 am

Crudux_Cruo wrote:... CD check automatically looks in your first CD drive for the CD, then gives up when it's not there.

Are you sure of that? Isn't it because you installed it from the first one? It probably is only looking to the drive where it was installed from, dosgames usually write a cfg file when installing.

Ahwell, aslong it works.

Crudux_Cruo · Post by **Crudux_Cruo** » Thu Oct 09, 2008 5:39 am

Yeah, I actually wiped off what was on there, and then reinstalled from the ISO mounted on drive E. I then tried to start the game straight after with nothing in my real drive (D) and the ISO on E, and it still said "CD-ROM not detected". I had to make the virtual drive D before it would run. The file generated on install even specified the drive as E, but it wouldn't work in this drive.

Post by **Larry Laffer** » Thu Oct 09, 2008 7:19 am

dosraider wrote:
Crudux_Cruo wrote:... CD check automatically looks in your first CD drive for the CD, then gives up when it's not there.
Are you sure of that? Isn't it because you installed it from the first one? It probably is only looking to the drive where it was installed from, dosgames usually write a cfg file when installing.

I've actually seen games(one adventure comes to mind, name eludes me tho... anyway) that only checked drive D. Because, why would anybody have TWO(or more) HDDs? Or TWO(or more) partitions?

Post by **dosraider** » Thu Oct 09, 2008 7:40 am

Yep, that was serious a flaw in the thoughts of the devs .....
The early W9x -(mainly W95 *ough*)- systems had only one C: partition and CD-Drive as D:

But it's still the same ol'song, most pre-installed systems -(NT-XP ànd Vista)- still only have one HUGE C:, go backup/defrag that one ...... *sigh*
And not to mention the 'recovery' OS disks, AH MY, THE HORROR!!!!!

Post by **Larry Laffer** » Thu Oct 09, 2008 12:14 pm

dosradier wrote:ut it's still the same ol'song, most pre-installed systems -(NT-XP ànd Vista)- still only have one HUGE C:, go backup/defrag that one ...... *sigh*
And not to mention the 'recovery' OS disks, AH MY, THE HORROR!!!!!

For the simple minds of the simple users, of course!