Old Scratched Up Game Disks Or Something Else, Help?

[Dude 77]

Well, it has been a long time since I was here last, in fact the welcome message on the top right of the forums says my last visit was 12-31-1969. Maybe someone here even remembers me?

Anyway, I have just gotten the itch to play through this great game again and have had nothing but problems along the way. I have diligently searched through this forum to find answers for nearly all my problems, but there is one thing that is becoming apparent, I think some of my problems are because of a bad game disk. Now before I go asking someone to do something crazy like upload a copy of their game disks, or even just some critical files so that I can make my own working disks, I will list what I have worked through and what the current problem I am working on is. Please note I have read through a lot of threads and have followed all the tech advice I could find.

1. I received a bunch of read errors when creating an image of my disks so I can play the game off of a virtual drive. I eventually did get a clean read and was able to install the game successfully off my virtual drive.

2. When I did try and start W&W I was met by a black screen with an hour glass floating in the middle and a report about an invalid memory address or something like that. I fixed this by finding a gameopt.dat file for download on these forums and reinstalling the game (placed the gameopt.dat file in my directory).

3. Had some problems with a jerky mouse and I could not find a way to slow down my mouse (I have a Logitech G5, USB Polling Rate, not DPI)). I eventually just plugged in a low end mouse to fix this.

*4. This is where I am stuck now. I can start the game, create characters, etc, but the game crashes if I try and play the Intro Movie. I have not found any other errors as of yet and I am hoping this is the last of them. I would really appreciate any help. Also, I have applied all the patches on the Ironworks W&W site and have done the VDub fix.

PC Spec:
Intel e6750 CPU
nVidia 8800GTX GPU (169.44 drivers)
Creative Soundblaster X-Fi Fat1lty edition
32bit XP Pro SP2 with all available hotfixes (via Microsoft Update utility)
3.27GB usable RAM
5GB Virtual Memory (set amount, not OS controlled)

[Shadow Stranger]

I can't get my version of W&W to run from a virtual drive. It gives me a message: "CD Rom Disc Failure". Try installing and running from your hard drive, see if that solves the problem. At least the virtual CD disk image makes for a very fast and quiet installation.

If the disks are damaged it will be impossible to buy new replacements, this game is virtually legacy. Then you would need to ask people to upload their files.

[Dude 77]

I am not having problem running the game off the virtual drive (I created a 1:1 copy using Alcohol 120%), but I will try what you are suggesting. I just want to play this game again and have it work. I am somewhat meticulous in this way, its not good enough that it mostly works, I want to have evrything working even if I will probably never use it :/

[Dude 77]

OK, so I think I *may* have an idea what is happening here.
Take a look at this:
http://www.ironworksforum.com/forum/...ht=intro+movie

I took a look at this and thought I had the answer so I tried setting my renderer to software and restarting but surprise, surprise... Setting the renderer to software mode caused the error where the game boots up into a black screen with an hourglass in the center of the screen (this is fixed by copying gameopt.dat back to the install directory).

As per the advice in the thread I found a link to download all the Indeo codecs and I installed them all, but that still hasn't solved my problem.

If I can get this working I was thinking I would make a graphical update for W&W. Nothing crazy, probably just replacing a few key textures and remastering some of the audio files. I figure if I replay the game I may as well make it look good

[Wyvern]

I haven't had a chance to check but sometimes you can still find the game on Ebay and a few other strange places - even as old as it is.

To an extent you may be able to repair your scratched disks with tooth paste - yes, tooth paste. Apply some to the disks and rub from the outside edge to the center or the other way around but never around and around. Tooth paste can polish off some of the surface scratches - clean off the tooth paste and see if it is any better.

Hope that will work!!!