Need help with HOMM4 disc 2

[Black_Horizon]

Generally in the past, I have not had problems making "full working" copies of my games CDs, which basically means I can both install with the copied CDs and I can also play using the copied CDs. I never had a problem backing up Dungeon Siege and Alice, which are supposed to be SafeDisc v2. According to gamecopyworld.com, Heroes of Might and Magic IV is supposed to be protected by safedisc v2 as well. I copied the first CD no problem, but the second CD has been a complete pain.

My hardware, DVD drive and Phillips CD-R/RW drive, should not be the problem, as I have not had problems with backing up any copy protected CDs before, including many of the latest to hit the stores. I know the second CD has errors between sectors 800 - 10000, which makes me think it is SafeDisc v1, which further confuses me. I've tried reading at 1x and writing at 1x, once using AWS (in case of SafeDisc v2) and once without AWS (in case of SafeDisc v1). I've wasted four CD-Rs so far, each having the same result. I put the copied CD into my drive (no CloneCD tray icon during any of this, if you were wondering), and when I tried to start HOMM4, the splash screen came up and my CD rom started up acting like it was going to run, but after about 20 seconds the splash screen disappears and I get an Windows error saying that "Heroes4 caused an invalid page fault in module ~DF394B.TMP". So it is as if the CD is recognized to be the original, but something just goes wrong when trying to load something off the copied CD or harddrive during the inital game startup.

Anybody with suggestions and/or solutions, please help me. Perhaps in return I might be able to help you, if you need it. Any help is very much appreciated! Thanks!

[Monty Burns]

I am not sure if this helps but HOMM4 is protected with SD2.51.xx, whereas Alice has an old sd2 protection (up to 2.30.xx, I don't know the correct version) and Dungeon Siege only uses cdchecks (I think).
Maybe it is a hardware problem, because I don't know of any Philips writer that is able to do correct efm encoding and not all dvd drives can read in raw-dao(96) mode.
I cannot give you any hints in the right direction as I neither own the game nor the latest version of clonecd (still using 3.3.4.1).

Try to look here to get the right settings for clonecd.

Hope this helps.

[Black_Horizon]

Thanks for your help. I'm not sure if I'll be able to make a working copy yet, but atleast it puts another idea out there for me to try. What kind of drive would you recommend for reading CDs that are going to be copied?