Problem: Do cd labels influence installers?

[Yogiz]

I have a big bunch of games I've bought over times, recently I decided to make copies of all of them including all the latest patches, the original serials and no-cd cracks so the installation trouble would be minimal. That way I could also archive all the original cd-s and be sure that they'll stay in good shape. So there, I made ISO-images of all the cd-s, opened them one at a time with PowerISO, added the patches, serials and no-cd-s and also changed the labels (Well, the text strings that appear for example in My Copmuter when the cd is inserted) to be more alike in formatting. So far everything went well, however when I tested the images later, I found out there were some games that couldn't be installed anymore, more specificly, they didn't reconise the second cd and kept asking for it. First I suspected that something was wrong with the installer itself, however installer should be on each cd seperately, not installed on the computer as far as I know. Right now I suspect that some installers of some games actually check these labels and don't reconise the cd-s because of it. Well the question is then, is it the labels, some hidden CRC check or something else?

Working games on multiple cd-s:
Evil Genius
Prey
C&C Generals
Aliens vs. Predator 2
Black & White 2
Star wars K.o.t.O.R.
Star wars K.o.t.O.R. 2
Thief 3: Deadly Shadows

Non-working games on multiple cd-s with the aformentioned problem:
Chessmaster 10th Edition
C&C Generals- Zero Hour
Flatout

Thanks in advance.

Originally posted in http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?t=221693

[Joe Forster/STA]

Yes, the volume label is important. It is, however, rare that the setup/installer software is already copy protected, i.e. it doesn't run without the original CD/DVD.

[Yogiz]

So if I want to get these three games' backups working, I'll have to find the original cd-s and check their labels. Then change the copies labels to be same? Is it possible to circumvent the label checks in setups, perhaps changing the label name that gets compared against? Also is there some way to find about protected installers based on games so I could be sure that this is in fact the problem?

Thanks for replying.

[Grumpy]

I am not sure about the Chessmaster 10th Edition game as I have not looked into it?

But yes the label is very important for both C&C Generals- Zero Hour and Flatout!
Both games use a MSI file. And yes the labels can be edited to suit the labels you used.

Search for both games in the CD2DVD forum. The information you want is contained in the conversion readme.

You need to read the parts about a program named 'Orca'.

Orca is the program you will need to edit the MSI file in both games.

You can download orca from cd-2-dvd.com (link is in my sig below).

[Yogiz]

Thanks a thousand, I'm on it.

edit: Well, I never knew it was possible to make multi-cd games work on a single dvd, this is probably what I'm going to do from now on. It's a pity I didn't find this site before writing all the other games : ). Thank you very much.

[forkart]

Originally Posted by Yogiz

Thanks a thousand, I'm on it.

edit: Well, I never knew it was possible to make multi-cd games work on a single dvd, this is probably what I'm going to do from now on. It's a pity I didn't find this site before writing all the other games : ). Thank you very much.

You can use magiciso to combine multi-cd games into one dvd.
http://www.magiciso.com/FAQ/FAQ0001.htm

[Yogiz]

Thanks but I already managed to burn all my cd-s succesfully using hints from cd-2-dvd. Thanks again.

[acal3000]

yeah it's rare installers are protected but some are Example the Gothic 2 installer or others have the Macrovision crap on them but yeah most don't