CD check problem with F.O.

posted on February 15th, 2012, 7:23 pm

making your own iso is always a good idea, for speed of loading and for backup purposes. and it's perfectly legal.

the results of that test look perfectly normal to my untrained eyes, it has detected the E volume's name correctly, and afaik that should be enough.

grasping at straws here, maybe the fact that you have D assigned to something that isn't an optical drive is causing a conflict. maybe if you quickly change the volume with letter D to letter G, if possible and then test.

posted on February 15th, 2012, 7:37 pm

making your own iso is always a good idea, for speed of loading and for backup purposes. and it's perfectly legal.

the results of that test look perfectly normal to my untrained eyes, it has detected the E volume's name correctly, and afaik that should be enough.

grasping at straws here, maybe the fact that you have D assigned to something that isn't an optical drive is causing a conflict. maybe if you quickly change the volume with letter D to letter G, if possible and then test.

if it were that Easy (unfortunately) I could just spoof the name and make all the volume names "Armada 2" ; changing vol name is far easier then changing drive letters, due to software pathing. 

posted on February 15th, 2012, 8:46 pm

if it were that Easy (unfortunately) I could just spoof the name and make all the volume names "Armada 2" ; changing vol name is far easier then changing drive letters, due to software pathing. 

pretty sure it needs to be a CDFS file system, renaming a ntfs data partition will probably fail.

posted on February 15th, 2012, 9:02 pm

making your own iso is always a good idea, for speed of loading and for backup purposes. and it's perfectly legal.

Where would i find information if i was looking at doing this??

I currently swap my Armada 2 cd from two systems and always have to transport the disc with me atm?

Could anyone help?

posted on February 15th, 2012, 9:16 pm

Where would i find information if i was looking at doing this??

I currently swap my Armada 2 cd from two systems and always have to transport the disc with me atm?

Could anyone help?

get ashampoo free (just google it or click this link: link for those without the google-fu) it can turn an optical disk into an iso. compress that iso using 7zip if you need to, it will be better than uif compression.

to mount iso files i recommend virtual clone drive, also free, (link). install that on the computers you want to mount the image.

posted on February 15th, 2012, 11:22 pm

I use Imgburner for all my iso and imaging stuff.
For emulation I use the free version of Daemon Tools.

Never had issues with these two.

[DOCa Cola]

posted on February 15th, 2012, 11:37 pm

Last edited by DOCa Cola on February 15th, 2012, 11:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.

yes, the test program just checked the volumes the same way as armada is enumerating them. wanted to make sure that part works correctly, since there seems to be something really weird going on.

still not sure why this issue occours. armadas cd validity check isn't that advanced. could you please try to purge your Fleet Operations settings folder and see if that helps?

You can find your fleet operations settings folder:
C:UsersAppDataRoamingStar Trek Armada II Fleet Operations

note that these folders may be hidden in the default configuration of Windows.

this folder can also be reached by Start->Run and copy&paste the following:
[font=Courier New]%APPDATA%Star Trek Armada II Fleet Operations[/font]

did FO's CD check ever work?

posted on February 16th, 2012, 3:06 am

did FO's CD check ever work?

No, I had exchanged Emails about it with you in the past, but you kept thinking I was asking for Circumvention . so I gave up until yesterday. 

[DOCa Cola]

posted on February 16th, 2012, 9:44 am

Last edited by DOCa Cola on February 16th, 2012, 11:59 am, edited 1 time in total.

yes and no, since i have had reason to believe that after you gave me a one-liner about why fleet operations demands a cd. using the forum to get help in technical questions has several advantages.

we do not care if anyone uses cd circumvention of any kind. there are good reasons to do that. it really isn't our job to enforce that. however we won't support it either.
i'll try to analyze the problem further.

posted on February 16th, 2012, 2:23 pm

I use Imgburner for all my iso and imaging stuff.
For emulation I use the free version of Daemon Tools.

Never had issues with these two.

Yeah, I grabbed me the free version of daemon tools recently and used it to make an iso and mount it to my laptop.  Worked without a hitch. 

[Anonymous]

posted on February 16th, 2012, 2:44 pm

Last edited by Anonymous on February 16th, 2012, 2:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.

some AV can give false positives for Daemon tools (free and pro i believe), so don't worry if you get an alert. i've used it in the past too and it gets the job done. i just like virtual clonedrive better due to personal preference.

also DT installs sptd, which imgburn will give you a nag about, you can ignore that, sptd shouldn't cause problems.

alcohol 120% (not free, so don't waste your money) also installs sptd for the record. alcohol will mount more image formats, but tbh i don't know why anybody uses other formats than iso these days. iso is more than enough for non professionals. and 7zipping an iso always gives me more compression than uif. the only downside is that 7z files can't be mounted, while uif can (if only by even fewer programs such as magiciso's virtual drive). which doesn't bother me much, as i can temporarily decompress images i am using.

EDIT: just though that i'm not sure if ISO can store sub channel data, which is useful for emulation of games consoles. maybe that's another small limitation of iso.

[Nebula_Class_Ftw]

posted on February 16th, 2012, 5:22 pm

Last edited by Nebula_Class_Ftw on February 16th, 2012, 5:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Daemon Tools actually has a little more filetype support than Alcohol 120% according to Wikipedia.
Alcohol 120% is all about the .mds/.mdf file format it uses by default, that uses two files to store an exact copy of the disk (.mdf keeps trakk of a whole bunch of data about how the data was on the original disk, while .mds is the data itself).
Daemon Tools does it one better by defaulting to .mdx, which stores the exact copy in only one file. Alcohol 120% can't use .mdx (it's proprietary), but Daemon Tools can use .mds/.mdf.

So I would recommend Daemon Tools overall if you plan on making bakkups.

posted on February 16th, 2012, 8:41 pm

Daemon Tools actually has a little more filetype support than Alcohol 120% according to Wikipedia.

i wasn't clear, i meant Alcohol does more than virtual clone drive.

the extra info kept by the mdf/mds format is only really useful for piracy, by fooling cd checks. but most releases these days tend to eschew defeating fancy cd checks with a fancy disk image and just give cracked files that have the checks removed.

the only time i've seen more than iso needed is the subchannel stuff on playstation images. i'm not sure if mdf/mds deals with subchannel.

posted on February 16th, 2012, 9:20 pm

The whole point of .mdf/.mds is that it recreates the exact bitpattern on the disk. Metadata like that could only be missing from the .mdf/.mds recreation if it was somehow not actually on the disk, which would defeat the purpose of having metadata. Subchannels are definitely dealt with.

posted on February 16th, 2012, 10:53 pm

Back to topic.
Have you figured it out yet?