Difference between revisions of "Running WA without the CD"

Revision as of 17:21, 31 January 2009

This guide will help you create a Disk image of your W:A CD, so you don't have to keep the physical CD in your drive every time you play W:A. The disk image is "mounted" into a virtual CD drive, which emulates a physical drive.

Creating the disk image

LC ISO Creator

LC ISO Creator is a simple ISO creation tool, although it doesn't run on older Windows versions (ME/98) and will abort if it encounters read errors. The resulting ISO will also not work with pre-Beta W:A versions (1.0 and 3.0), as they are still protected with SafeDisc. Use CloneCD if you have a scratched CD, have an old Windows version or need to run old W:A versions.

1. Download LC ISO Creator
2. Unpack, and run it
3. Select the drive where you have inserted your W:A CD, and click Create ISO
4. Save it to your computer
5. Wait for the process to complete

CloneCD

CloneCD is a shareware disk image creation program which uses a proprietary image file format. The program will expire after a while, but you'll need to use it only once (to create the disk image).

1. Download the Clone CD installer, and run it. Follow the installer instructions. If you encounter an error message, just click "Okay" or "Continue anyway" where applicable.
2. Start up CloneCD, click your way through the message boxes, and click the first button "Read to image file".
3. Select the drive your W:A CD is in.
4. Select Protected PC Game
5. Click Browse and select an appropriate location for the image (e.g. an empty folder on your hard drive)
6. Click Start
7. When it has finished, close the program.

Mounting the disk image

Now that you have your W:A disk image, you need to set up a virtual CD drive. You can use either the popular Daemon Tools, or SlySoft's proprietary Virtual CloneDrive solution. Both are free to use, but Daemon Tools requires Windows 2000 or newer.

Daemon Tools

Daemon Tools is a very popular disk image emulation program which understands a great variety of disk image file formats. Follow these steps to set up a virtual drive with Daemon Tools.

1. Download the Daemon Tools installer, and run it. Follow the installer instructions. Restart your computer when prompted. Deselect Browser Toolbar and Browser's Start Page when prompted, unless you want to support Daemon Tools by viewing ads.
2. Locate the W:A disk image you created, and double-click it. Select Yes when prompted.

Virtual CloneDrive

1. Download Virtual CloneDrive, and run it. Follow the installer instructions. If you encounter an error message, just click "Okay" or "Continue anyway" where applicable.
2. Restart your computer.
3. Start up Virtual CloneDrive.
4. Click "Okay" and close the program.
5. Locate "IMAGE.ccd" - this file will be in the same folder as the image itself - and double click it.
6. Put a shortcut to the IMAGE.ccd file in the following directory:
   C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Start Menu\Programs\Startup (exact address may vary from computer to computer)
   This will ensure that every time you start up your computer, the image file will be automatically mounted, ready for use.

You should now be able to load WA as you normally do, without the need for the CD to be present.