I've got a proposition : how'd you like to play WITHOUT the cd in the drive AND with any future patch ? Knowing C&C, the game will probably be patched at least six times and if you want to play multiplayer, you'd need another crack each time. You can use
Alcohol120% to make a hard disk image of the play cd and mount that, and you can then play without any crack, without the cd. If you're wondering why'd you go to all this trouble, remember that you'll have to either return the game, or use a crack to play, or use something like A120%. Just using the original will probably not work unless EA decides to cut out the copy protection in a future patch. To each his own, but I would surely recommend A120%. If A120% works, you can also use the free Daemon Tools to mount the image. Think about it.
PS We know the copy protection sucks, that's the reason GameCopyWorld exists.