A crap! - Erm...new game - need help please...

[RB]

Hi all,

Been a while since I was here .... hope all the 'regulars' here are going well - and keeping busy

Right then , to the point...

Just picked up a game yesterday called 'America : The Game'...

It's a kinda 'Cowboy and Indian' type of game - looks pretty good, although not installed/played it yet..

Tried CloneCD on it, and it was quite happy right up to about 98%....soon as it go there the time remaining shot right up to like 8.5 hours! eek!

The first time, I stopped it, rebooted, and tried again...same thing happened again...

Now I've experienced this before when making backup's with CloneCD, but usually it happens at the beginning of a CD, it'll give you something like 14hours to copy of something, and then after about 2-3 minutes it drops right down to about 10/15 minutes....

I actually fell asleep and left it going, until I woke up with a jump - sleeping on your computer desk kinda does that to ya you know - anyway...it had got to 99% but was still quoting 7 hours + to go....CloneCD had been running for 1hour 40 minutes at this time...

At which point I gave up on it..

I've run the CDPS thingy on it, to see if I can find anything interesting, but nothing there really means much to me, it did bring up the following though :

invalid TOC
invalid track length

The rest were kinda, either No's, N/A's or None/Unknown etc...

Was kinda wondering if :

a) Anyone else has seen this game yet, and had any luck in backing it up
b) Thinks I should just leave CloneCD to keep going, literaly for the couple of hours its going to take
c) You think that there's no way it should take that long, and not use CloneCD to backit up.

Any thoughts or info on this would be appreciated...

Whilst I'm not 'new' to doing this stuff, I'm also not a 'Guru' like some of you good chaps...so...help me out eh

Thanks in advance all

Respectfully

Robb Meade

[cracker]

RIGHT M8..U SAID THE GAMES WAS NEW SO IT CANT BE SCRATCHED..OR DUSTY..HMM...

HAVE U TRIED ANY MORE TYPES OF SOFTWARE SUCH AS: BLINDREAD...CDRWIN..DISC JUGGLER...

JUST HAVE A COUPLE MORE GOES WITH CLONE CD AND BE A BIT MORE PATIENT...IT TOOK ME 8 HOURS TO BACKUP C&C RED ALERT 2..EHH!!


SO KEPP ME POSTED AND I WILL HELP U FURTHER..

CTRLTOM

[RB]

Lo Cracker...

Thanks for the reply - here's some follow up info on the situation...

Somewhere along the lines of today - my computer has decided to detect another CD Writer!!! Not quite sure how, or indeed why, but it wasnt there last night, and is today, I've now disabled it, as removing it seems to cause it to be reinstalled everytime I reboot? Weird....the only thing I've installed today was the CDPS thing that I mentioned in the first post....it looks like my CD Writer, but its called V386 PHANTOM SCSI CD WRITER 1.0f..

ANYWAY!! back to the plot...

SO, I've now tried this 'friggin' game several times, and I'm convinced its crashing my computer to spite me

I've tried Clone CD many times now today, I've tried using the CD Writer to actually READ the CD too, but on 2 occasions it got to 55% and then 61% respectively, and then seemed to stop, and do nothing, the only thing that was still moving was the timer telling me how long it had taken, the CD Writer lights were just 1 green, and the one that shows activity had gone out, and stayed out for some time.

I've burnt another CD today, with something on it for my daughter, so I know that the system as a whole is ok - as this worked fine.

I've also tried reading the CD from the main CD Rom drive, but again, its getting about half way and then stopping, and there is no way to come back out of this, apart from rebooting the machine, as the 'cancel' button wont stop it etc...

I've tried using Nero today too, but again, that ended up the same way..

I've not tried Blind Read/Write yet, as I had a load of problems whilst trying to use that once before...it would make the images, but then couldnt seem to burn them to the CD's? I've probably got an older version than the current one too I expect...

I've since installed the game from the original and played it, it looks quite good, but this was really just a test to make sure that the original was indeed ok.

I'll try a few more things, but I'm getting to the point of giving up now...

This game is actually in the CloneCD database thing too btw - its called America : Beyond the front line (I think).

I've tried the settings that supplies, but I have to read it in my CD Writer to do the 'sub channel' stuff, as my CD Rom doesnt support it, and basically now just go back to the beginning of my posting and read again (just like those old basic programs!)

Anyway....

I'll plod on and see what happens, least I havent wasted any CD's yet, as I cant even get to the 'burning' stage...

The games got 'Data Becker' stamped all over the box and stuff, anyone else had any experiences with products from these people??

Thanks again in advance for further replies, and help..

Respectfully

Robb Meade

[CaptainTrips]

Hi RB,
"America - No peace beyond the line" is ProtectCD protected. You have to check the subchannels for data and audio, to make a working backup. It is normal that the readout at the end of the cd takes long time. It can take up to 24h!!!!!!, if your cd-reader handels unreadable sectors bad So hold on and and have a bit patience
The second prob with the drive, sounds like you have installed daemon-tools on your system.

[RB]

W000W! Now thats pretty useful info

K, first off, ta for the info regarding the subchannels, that the 2 items on the top of the CloneCD list aint it?

The only thing with this is that it *really* does look like the Writer isnt doing anything when its reading it? ie, no lights indicating anything happening at all....should I just leave it?

I'm currently trying BlindRead etc to read it to an image, its so far taken 1 hour 7 mins, and has been showing that its done 98% for about the last hour...the time is still increasing, and the CDRom light is still on, indicating that something is still happening, only thing here is that CloneCD reported to me that my CDRom drive doesnt support the sub channels for reading etc, so is this likely to be a problem whilst using Blind Read? or does it do stuff a different way? either way, its taking ages.....

As for that second problem - oh yes - forgot I'd installed that Thanks for that one - I think I'll go remove that now then .... I couldnt close that down earlier either - and had to bosh it one with a large slippery trout before it would admit defeat

Thanks for the help - keep reading I'll post more info here as I get it - it may prove handy to someone else...

Thanks again

Respectfully

Robb Meade

[RB]

Ok - so here's the next part....

I've now successfully uninstalled Daemon Tools - and that other drives gone - yay!

But...

I've tried the old CloneCD with the 2 sub channel settings set, and its been way over an hour now with no 'activity' coming from the CD Writer...and when I click on 'cancel' it dont do nothing - needs rebooting as we speak...

So, it would appear that my Yamaha 4416s (internal scsi), aint going to be up to this task...

Here's the funny thing though.....when I looked at the log created by CloneCD, it was still only on the first track.

When I looked at the log in Blind Read earlier today, it was on the 4th track - ie, it had already done the 1st data, and the 2 audio, and was on the last data...but I still dont think that it would have done those 'Subchannel' things, as it was reading it via my CD Rom, not CD Writer...

So...if this isnt possible to copy on the Hardware I have...what is the *best* CD Burner on the market these days? And at about the £150-£200 mark?

I've heard about CloneCD's settings quite a bit since being part of this forum, and one thing that was mentioned was the DAO (disk at once?), thing....its greyed out in my CloneCD's settings, so I guess I cant do it - is it important - does it make a big difference for games etc?

The writer I have is fine for music, regular data, and quite a few games...

/me looks at shelf covered in CD's...

But, is it now beginning to get to the stage where I should be looking at getting a new one? If so, which one, whats best, what has the most compatibility for backing up games etc....

Respectfully

Robb Meade

[BOT]

Check the hardware requirements at http://www.elaborate-bytes.com/