MY GIRLFRIEND has a Dell XPS 420. She mainly uses it to play Sims 3. About a month ago, her game began taking longer and longer to read the DVD. When we attempted to install the new expansion pack, it kept on giving her cyclic redundancy checks, etc. It looked like the DVD+-RW drive was going bad, so I purchased a replacement DVD-ROM from Newegg (It's SATA, by the way).

After installing that drive, she was able to install the new expansion pack and play the game without any problems. I should add that once she put in the DVD for the game, she didn't take it out for the next few weeks (this will become somewhat important later). So, there was no other use on the drive other than playing that game.

Last night I wanted to play a little of that game on my computer. I have an older machine with an IDE DVD-ROM. I played it for a few hours, and then we went to bed.

This morning she told me that the game doesn't work anymore on her machine. I went to look at the problem. When I insert the DVD into her DVD-ROM, it attempts to read it, and then... well.. sort of slurrs to a halt (think of a malfunctioning hyperdrive). Windows doesn't even recognize that there's a DVD in the drive.

It reads fine in my DVD-ROM, so it doesn't appear to be the DVD. Her player will read CDs fine, but it won't recognize any kind of DVD, even films.

So, what's going on here? Did the portion of this player that reads DVDs spontaneously go bad after a month of use just after the first player went bad?

7/4/2010 6:36:53 PM

It's either a cable or SATA controller that is failing/bad.

7/4/2010 7:34:02 PM

Is there any place locally I could pick up an SATA cable? I'm sure the motherboard has at least a few different spots to plug in.

7/4/2010 7:34:52 PM

RadioShack, TigerDirect/CompUSA, Best Buy(?)...

7/4/2010 7:37:42 PM

perhaps making an image of that dvd and using a virtual cdrom drive would make this easier for the both of you regardless of the outcome of this?

7/4/2010 10:47:38 PM

Possibly, but in the long run I'd like to fix the problem.

7/4/2010 11:21:33 PM

well no shit

7/5/2010 12:16:20 AM

Lots of truth in this thread

7/5/2010 1:54:36 AM

be sure the ends of the SATA cable are bent properly so they won't be obstructed by anything else in the case; the ends can be straight or have right angles and you should try to get the same combination

7/5/2010 3:29:20 AM

I picked up a new SATA power cable today. Going to try it out.

P.S. How do you guys pronounce "SATA?" I asked for an Ess-Ay-Tee-Ay cable, and the guy at the shop said "One say-ta cable, here you go!"

7/5/2010 1:48:01 PM

say-tah

7/5/2010 1:49:20 PM

I always thought it was "SAH-tah" (as if it were a word in some Romance language)



[Edited on July 5, 2010 at 1:53 PM. Reason : that's my M.O. for unfamiliar words and it usually works

7/5/2010 1:53:06 PM

i always said it like satan without the n

7/5/2010 1:59:10 PM

haha, apparently I'm the only one who spells it out then

7/5/2010 2:01:35 PM

i used to say "S-A-T-A" but then heard someone call it '"satan"without the n' and it sounded slicker. so i say it that way now.

7/5/2010 2:03:23 PM

you say the seita
and I say the sahta

you say the deita
and I say the dahta

seita, sahta
deita, dahta
let's turn the program off

7/5/2010 2:06:10 PM

Alright the cable didn't work.

I ripped an ISO of the DVD using MagicISO and mounted it with Daemon Tools. It loads up fine, but once I get into the game it displays the message "We are unable to verify that this is a valid copy of the Sims 3" and then quits.

I've tried turning on SecureROM and other protection options on Daemon Tools. I'd rather not used a cracked EXE, so if anyone has any options on how to bypass that message that'd be swell. Thanks.

7/5/2010 4:57:53 PM

I didn't think we were allowed to discuss warez or methods of bypassing copyright in Tech Talk

7/5/2010 5:09:38 PM

It doesn't matter because I have a purchased copy of the game.

7/5/2010 6:26:24 PM

just because you purchased that disc, you don't have the right to hack a new copy at will.

7/6/2010 7:53:37 AM

Annnnyway. How can I bypass this without using a crack?

7/6/2010 9:04:51 AM

Quote :

"How can I bypass this without using a crack?"

if you can't use the optical drive and you can't use a virtual drive, then it's impossible (without using a crack, anyway)

the executable is designed to check for the disc upon game startup and at times during game play (at least, that's how most of them do it)...your best bet is to just download a cracked executable (zomgillegalitycallthegestapo!) and be done with all this crap

while using a virtual drive, did you disable your optical drive and/or set the drive letter to what the optical drive was?

7/6/2010 9:36:34 AM

I should try that. Thanks.

7/6/2010 9:50:10 AM

You also might want to see if its availble on direct2drive. You may be able to register your key through there and download a disc-less copy. Maybe send EA support an email asking them what your options are.

Newer versions of securerom dont require the disc to be in the drive so they might have a legit way to get a discless version.

7/6/2010 11:48:40 AM