Burning COW

[Wolf]

I recall a thread on this about 12 months ago, I've tried a search but cannot find it.

For some reason I cannot get the NoCD patch to work, so I have allways run COW off a backup CD, this CD has now given up the ghost and I'm loathe to put my original in after having to get it from across the pond.

Can anyone recommend the best way to burn through the copy protection on COW to get a useable backup CD?

[nemo]

Create an image from your original CD using CD Clone for instance (should give you a .cue file, a .bwt file and the image itself as a result). Put all this on a folder somewhere on a hard drive.
Grab Virtual Daemon Manager or some equivalent tool and have your system believe you are mounting a CD file system from the above mentioned folder. Daemon Manager can emulate Safedisc and Securom and thus get rid of the problems associated with CD protection.
It has been running without a glitch on my W2000 box for nearly three years now - and the original CD quietly lies in a data safe...http://www.warfarehq.com/forums/images/smilies/cool.gif
My 0.02 €
Cheers

[Redwolf]

CoW is using safedisk copy protection. This works by having a cryptographic key stored on a place on the CD which is outside the CD specification but nontheless can be read by almost all CD drives. But it cannot be written to by most CD writers.

What you need is a CD writer which can write to that position on the disk. Online reviews of CD writer often mention this, google for it.

NOTE: I am not posting this as an aide for piracy. Since Norm Kroger himself released the 1.06 patch with safedisk copy protection removed, and stated that Take Two did not object to him doing so, I feel safe to apply the same for the 1.04 version.

Plus this kind of copy protection sucks since if you want to fire up a game protected by it in 10 years you can be sure the drives available at the time only implement today's CD reading inside the published spec for CD drives.

[mr_clark]

I recall a thread on this about 12 months ago, I've tried a search but cannot find it.

For some reason I cannot get the NoCD patch to work, so I have allways run COW off a backup CD, this CD has now given up the ghost and I'm loathe to put my original in after having to get it from across the pond.

Can anyone recommend the best way to burn through the copy protection on COW to get a useable backup CD?

I recommend the latest version of CloneCD and if you have the available disc space an image should work just fine. (though burning should not be a problem :X )

[Dicke Bertha]

CoW is using safedisk copy protection. This works by having a cryptographic key stored on a place on the CD which is outside the CD specification but nontheless can be read by almost all CD drives. But it cannot be written to by most CD writers.

What you need is a CD writer which can write to that position on the disk. Online reviews of CD writer often mention this, google for it.

NOTE: I am not posting this as an aide for piracy. Since Norm Kroger himself released the 1.06 patch with safedisk copy protection removed, and stated that Take Two did not object to him doing so, I feel safe to apply the same for the 1.04 version.

Plus this kind of copy protection sucks since if you want to fire up a game protected by it in 10 years you can be sure the drives available at the time only implement today's CD reading inside the published spec for CD drives.


Well one can only wonder how many people are there out there playing TOAW for free.... I mean are we talking about a thousand people or a hundred thousand, or maybe the entire 3rd world?

Poor Take2, the money they must be losing...

Someone get them a strategical sales manager, quick...

[Moriturus]

Well one can only wonder how many people are there out there playing TOAW for free.... I mean are we talking about a thousand people or a hundred thousand, or maybe the entire 3rd world?

Poor Take2, the money they must be losing...

Someone get them a strategical sales manager, quick...
Screw 'em. :angry: They would have made a bundle if they'd kept working with Norm Koger and come out with a TOAW Second Edition with fixes to all of the stuff which honor rules have to take care of right now.