XP games on CD/DVDs

[Jefferson]

I'v'e rebuilt my old T43 and I love playing games on it. I have several good games from the XP era, Need for Speed, Alice 1, black and white to name a few.

They are all CD/DVD based games.

I hate swapping CD/DVDs for playing games. I tried to use virtual CD software but they simply don't work. I imagine all game CD/DVDs have

some kinda copy protection. I never play pirated games and all my games are legit, boxed set.

Is there a way to play those games without having to swap discs? Or do I have to look for the pirated versions on the internet, which seems too ironic...

[theterminator93]

I make images with ImgBurn, then mount them with Daemon Tools Lite. Sometimes images made with CloneCD work better, as they create a separate subchannel file which is included in the .cue.

[dr_st]

For protected games, I found that Alcohol 120 is good for making images compatible with the protection (SafeDisc/SecuROM/StarForce), but it's not free. CloneCD should also be able to do it. Not sure if ImgBurn can. In any case, you sometimes need to find the specific settings in the image-ripping tools that enable circumventing a specific copy protection.

[Jefferson]

I make images with ImgBurn, then mount them with Daemon Tools Lite. Sometimes images made with CloneCD work better, as they create a separate subchannel file which is included in the .cue.

thanks for the great tip! will try soon!

[Jefferson]

For protected games, I found that Alcohol 120 is good for making images compatible with the protection (SafeDisc/SecuROM/StarForce), but it's not free. CloneCD should also be able to do it. Not sure if ImgBurn can. In any case, you sometimes need to find the specific settings in the image-ripping tools that enable circumventing a specific copy protection.

will also try alcohol120. thanks for the tip!

[RealBlackStuff]

I still have the original versions of the games Myst and Riven, both on several CDs.
One of these days I intend to play them again, using my trusty Thinkpad T23 with Windows XP.
(FYI: the original battery on that T23 is still good for nearly 2 hours!)

Anybody know if I can copy all the CDs to the HDD and thus play without swapping CDs?
If so, how and/or what does it need?

[dr_st]

You just need to create a CD image and mount it to a virtual drive. Many of the tools mentioned in this thread can do just that. Daemon Tools usually works well and unless your CDs are copy-protected, you won't need anything else.

[skx]

In some countries no-cd cracks are legal if you own the original game. Less hassle honestly.

[RealBlackStuff]

I'm not worried about copy-protection, I have everything needed for/against that.
Just not too interested in swapping CDs all the time, since the CD drive is getting on in age.
A lot of my software is still in storage, which Daemon Tools version should I get for a laptop with XP and only 1GB RAM?

[theterminator93]

I've always had good luck with DT Lite 4.41.3 for that, e.g. on my T42p.

[skx]

that should indeed do the job

[Nportman]

Daemon Tools is a good software to create a virtual drive. There are several other virtual drive that you can use on windows system check this - https://www.winosbite.com/best-free-dae ... ternative/

[fissionpowered]

Many old games are also available on gog.com for a small fee. All of the installers are portable and DRM-free, so you can easily move things over to old XP machines.

Compatibility is good, but sometimes not as good as the originals (e.g. POD refuses to run on my Dell Dimension 4100 running XP, despite it being more than capable).

I use WinCDEmu-4.1 and have pretty good luck, might have to try Daemon tools as well.

[WinksLol]

I would suggest looking into no-CD cracks. These are patches that remove the CD/DVD check from the game, allowing you to play the game without the disc. However, be sure to use them with caution, as some may come bundled with malware. Still, it's great to hear that you never play pirated games and always use legit boxed sets. As a fellow gamer, I respect that.

[micrex22]

I would suggest looking into no-CD cracks. These are patches that remove the CD/DVD check from the game, allowing you to play the game without the disc. However, be sure to use them with caution, as some may come bundled with malware. Still, it's great to hear that you never play pirated games and always use legit boxed sets. As a fellow gamer, I respect that.

Thing is, a lot of those games have redbook -- so no point in cracking those ones if you need to emulate it anyways. Unless you're okay without music

[dr_st]

Redbook was already not popular in the XP era. Of course, there are many Win9x games with Redbook audio that still run on XP.

[micrex22]

Redbook was already not popular in the XP era. Of course, there are many Win9x games with Redbook audio that still run on XP.

There were still a handful (and many of them continued to be played way beyond 1999), off the top of my head for ones I remember that were later:

• Age of Empires 2 (1999)
• Dark Reign 2 (2000)
• Half-Life Blue Shift (2001)
• Frogger 2 (2000)
• Battlezone II (1999)
• Seven Kingdoms II (1999)

I know as Age of Empires 2 continued to be sold for decades they later swapped out the redbook audio (but that was already far past the XP era, it was assumed anyone with an XP box would still have CD audio).

I remember pretty much any store you went to, there'd always be Diablo 2 and Age of Empires 2 stocked up somewhere

[dr_st]

Precisely. All of the above games were released before Windows XP, but were of course played on many XP machines. By the way, I think it was since XP that CD audio could be played via the IDE cable, so you don't even need the special audio cables to the sound card.

Redbook audio pretty much died completely when games started using DVD as media, as it does not even support the standard. But even in that era, you could find various 'special' or 'collector' editions, which would often include the game's soundtrack in Redbook audio format on a separate CD.