another C & C Gen problem

[DownwardSpyral]

Before you get angry... I wanna let a few things be known...

1. This is not a pirated copy. I own the original discs
2. The error I am getting has not yet been discussed


Okay. the error I am getting is most likely an anti-piracy error, and it's not the end of the world, but I'm just curious is there is a way around it.

I install the game... full install.. using a BACK UP disc. I then install the 1.3 update, and copy over the cracked exe and game.dat and start up the game. it runs fine. I then try playing online and it tells me I need to update the game in order to play online. I update the game via the built in updater, and then restart it. Before it starts, it attempts to patch the game, and I get the error "Game.dat has been modified outside of this patch, updating was not successful"

While this isn't some grand crisis, because the error does not exist when I install and run/update using the original, but that defeats the purpose of a back-up disc...

And ideas?

[RincewindTheWiz]

I'm surprised you didn't see it yourself. The game comes announcing that game.dat was changed, and you did that by copying the crack over before updating the last time. At least that's what's in your post. Simply reinstall, either run the 1.3 patch or the in-game updater (which should go straight from 1.0 to the latest version) and then apply the crack. The problem I fear will be the last bit. It seems like there was yet another new patch for generals, and I'm sure I haven't seen any crack for it yet. So in future, always make sure you've got the original executable before trying to update, lotsa patches check this.

Now you could wait until the new crack comes out (won't be too long I think), or you can use Alcohol120% to play from a hard disk image and insure that you never need a crack anymore. It seems like c&c generals is a game that gets updated a lot, so if you do it this way, you might spare yourself quite some effort and trouble down the road. It's your call

[toxpa]

yup get alcohol120% proggy rocks its how im running the game and i find i have less problems running the game with it...

[DownwardSpyral]

Thanks for the speedy replies..

I know the answer to my problem seems painfully obvious, but no matter how i try getting the game.dat file to work, it never does. It tells me the file was updated outside of Generals (obviously to prevent software piracy) and that the update will not continue. It also suggests I reinstall the game.

I've also tried Alcohol 120. It kicks ass, best prog of its kind. I get the same error whether using an image, or a physical disc. You seem to know what you are talking about, so perhaps a setting is wrong in Alcohol, preventing me from creating a perfect backup.

When I messed with this, I was dealing with v1.3. I suppose I'll wait til the newest version's crack comes out, although the update isnt on the site yet.

[toxpa]

well if your using alcohol120% you don't need to burn a copy just run it right from the program itself...i know when i tried to make a copy i had problems so i just said screw it and im running it right from the image itself. I can update my game while its on a virtual drive and i haven't had that error like you've mentioned...

[RincewindTheWiz]

You can only burn a straight copy from a safedisc 2 image if your writer is safedisc 2 compatible (not many are). That's why I usually recommend using Alcohol120% to make an image and just run it. If you really want to make a 100% copy of a safedisc game, check this for a list of writers. You need two sheep in the 'correct EFM-encoding' column. If your burner isn't compatible, you can always compress the image files with winrar and write the rar file to a cd. I do this for most of my originals, since I don't have a safedisc compatible writer.