The Settlers: Rise of an Empire - The Eastern Realm
 

However, neither the core game or the expansion will work after installing the Eastern Realms, so it does something to the protection, perhaps updating it or something else. After I installed The Eastern Realm, both the main game and it's expansion now demand the dvd to be inserted. Needless to say that none of the images or fixes over at GCW work.

It would be the same if you would install patch 1.4/1.5.

BUT, I did got one of the GCW images to work eventually, by removing the power cables from the disk drives along with some other stuff, so, technically it does work.

I don't know exactlly wich one, but one of the images from GCW works with the Eastern Realm expansion, it gets it started, at least (I haven't played the game yet but I got it to start).

post's moved from protection list to here, protection list portion is NOT for discussions (even though some of the information is valid)...

Daemon Tools Pro Advanced with the latest SPTD and the mini-image mounted in the vIDE drive are working fine, with no need to remove the power cables.
As a side note, if you choose to activate the game, you will have a limited number of activations(three). After those three are used is bye-bye game. Meaning contact Ubi, having a lot of fun with their support and such. But for a brief period of time you didn't need the DVD in drive.
In cases like this I rather use my DVD...:D