Larian Studios Forums Beyond Divinity (English) Technical Problems Cd check doesn't work, pathetic software ... :-(

When i install it, i instert the cd , i get this little bar saying " checking

cd " or something.

While my pc is performing this action, it completely freezes & crashes.

At the end ( about 15 minutes later )

it says ' disc identification error '

it seems many people are having this problem :-(

Do you have the second CD in the drive when starting the game? If the disk 1 is used, or both disks are in optical drives and the copy protection checks disk 1 first, it will give the CD key error.

Well , i've sent some angry letters to Starforce

and to larian, because of my problem that didn't seem to get solved.

They tried, i tried ... Some other people tried.

But since the shop wouldn't take my game back and since it worked

on the pc of a friend of mine , i just formatted my pc & made some backups.

It works fine now, fun game too :x

So my guess is that some software on my pc caused malfunction of the game.

Alltho i closed down everything besides the install exe and my windows ...

Good game, but for the future i'd say : try another protection , i'm glad

games are being protected againt warez-freeloading but this is ( obviously )

bothering people that buy the software.

Great game ( finally a fresh rpg to keep me away from the too hot summer sun )

but i'd do some work ok the protection thingy.

Well I'm glad you got it working, but too bad it was such a hassle. There is definitely room for improvement with copy protection methods.

Ugh, I'm having the same problem...

I also grabbed an ISO initially to check the game out (I don't trust demos anymore since Black & White), and couldn't make it work, so I had to go by the demo and my experience with <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/div.gif" alt="" /> (another game I downloaded, made it to the second town, then bought it), and decided to buy it.

I brought it home, and did all of the following:

1. Uninstalled the pirate copy.
2. Installed my new, legit copy.
3. Rebooted like it told me to.
4. One of my friends pointed out that some games blacklist Alcohol 120%, so I uninstalled Alcohol 120% just in case. Another reboot to finish the uninstall. (WTF am I supposed to do without my CD backup software if a disc gets scratched, BTW?)
5. Also disconnected one of my CD drives (the drive that started not recognizing discs around the last time I installed a StarForce protected game), in case it was trying to read from the wrong drive.
6. Then I uninstalled the game and reinstalled from the other drive just in case.

Now, I still get a "Disc Identification Error".

I can post my report.txt if it's requested, but I might have to censor it a bit, I don't see home my machine name, username, and what all is on my start menu is pertinent at all... <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/question.gif" alt="" />

Welcome!

...pirate...



Hmm, do you have all your drivers updated?

Return it to the store and get a new copy. Also protect the discs. If you say what if it blows up in the disc, A) awesome story to tell. B) the shop should take it back. If not return it to the publisher.

Er, drivers?

Other than the StarForce drivers themselves, what drivers would you be referring to?

I mean, the drive uses standard windows DVD-RW drivers, and there don't seem to be any special drivers for it anywhere.

I suppose you could mean firmware, in which case yes, I have updated "drivers".

Anyone have any ideas OTHER than simply returning it? It's a half-hour drive to the nearest GameStop and I'm going to be busy tomorrow afternoon. That means I'll have to wait till Monday to return it (thank God I work within 10 min of the mall).

Drivers. Like, patchs.

That kind of thing.

try searching on the forums for it. it must have happened before.

Im sure larian would help you if you asked polietly. Or were pasient. Spelling? ick.

It wll work if you try it. Or you can always try download more copies.

Some people have had problems with out of date video card drivers, or with not having the latest critical updates for Windows, though I don't think that should be an issue until getting into the game itself.

Are you shutting down all non-essential programs (especially anti-virus) before trying to start the game?
Other than the drive you disconnected, do you have a different optical drive you could try the CD in?

The error report from the copy protection can be used by the Larians or the publisher to generate a unique key for your system, rather than require the play CD in the drive. It would be better to figure out the problem, but that is an option, anyway.

Yeah, I have fully updated drivers for my video card, sound card, et al.
I didn't think that was really relevant until after the Starforce check though.

As for other running software, I uninstalled Alcohol (Sacred has problems with it, figured this might too), hit "Disable Auto-Protect" in Norton Anti-virus, and shut down any software that wasn't absolutely necessary and/or interacts with the DVD drive in any way (i.e. eMule, PeerGuardian (eats CPU badly), Ad-Aware, AnyDVD, and anything else that was running in the background) except for Trillian 0.74I and Opera 7.51.

I have two optical drives on my machine, one is a CyberDrive CD-RW and the other an NEC DVD +/- R/RW. The NEC is the only one connected at the moment, and is the drive I installed the game from, and the other drive has spats of not realizing that I've put a disc in the drive, that started back when I installed Gangland (my first StarForce 3 protected title, but that's probably a coincidence).

I just wish I could get <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/beyond.gif" alt="" /> to work. The demo made it seem like it's pretty good, and <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/div.gif" alt="" /> was what made me make the push to buy it, as it was an excellent game.

Are you using the CD #2 (game CD) ? Since you have several CD drives, have you tried on both ? StarForce protection can in some very rare cases force the use of a drive instead of another one, but it should give you a message a bit more informative... What do you mean by "not connected" ? Is the IDE/SCSI cable completely unplugged ? Is the drive seen by Windows ? If nothing helps, make a report from the protection check dialog and send it to Larian support.

I'm using CD #2, and by not connected I mean that the drive is completely disconnected physically from the machine and sitting on my desk. =)

I'm getting ready to send the report to Larian right now, but I thought I'd see if anyone had a clue of how to make it work before firing off an e-mail to the company.

That was the response to BOTH emails I sent to support@larian.com. The first one included report.txt as an attachment, and the second included the report as the body of the message, using the subject mentioned in the report.

Of course, the message also mentions the following instruction under the section about CD Keys:



I'm not sure how exactly I'm supposed to do that, if it's not supposed to be an attachment and it's not supposed to be the message body, but "Oh, Well".

UPDATE: I'm up to three identical e-mails from Larian in response to my two requests. Not sure if I'll get a fourth or not.

I think its automated! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/shhh.gif" alt="" />

Good for Larian, a nice little beak for them!

Hey there...

Just wanted to let you know, I had exactly the same problem as you did, and managed to get it working without having to format...

So here's what you can try...

Step 1 - run regedit, find every key with "Beyond" in it, delete ALL keys...
Step 2 - uninstall game
Step 3 - Reboot
Step 4 - Reinstall...

This worked for me (same error - my original disc kept throwing up the "disk identification error", and MAY work for you to..

Hope it helps..

Yes, it could be that the warez version stored a wrong CD key in the registry. If the warez version and the one you purchased are from different languages, it could be the origin of the problem.

For your mails, be assured that we'll handle them as soon as we came back from holidays. The mails you are receiving are automated <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

w00t!

Uninstalling the game, then unning through my registry removing all the traces of the game/copy protection that weren't removed at uninstall, then running SFClean, then reinstalling the game did it.

That was mildly irritating... =p

Patching up to 1.45 then I'm gonna play. =)

Talking scsi. It doesnt seem to run at all on scsi cdrom (atleast not mine). Have to use the atapi dvdrom.

FWIW, my SCSI Plextor CD-RW and Pioneer DVD drive both work fine for BD.

Anybody tried something new for this game to work ?

I have more than 1 week trying to make this game work.
I tried different ways to install the game, reinstalling, using utilities Larian Support sent me.
In one of my tries suddenly the window told me invalid disc, I sent the report to larian support, they sent me a key but did not work.
I am being helped from larian support, but no luck yet.
The game open the first window, at 25% close and nothing happen, no errors are shown, just the game does not start.
There is no error files in beyond divinity directory.
I uninstalled most of the software for a possible conflict with the game.
I have a DVD and a CD Drive and in boths drives the game just does not start.
All my drivers and firmwares are updated.
I tried everything written in this forum.
How Can I know if the problem is hardware or software ?

What Can I try next, before I give up ?
Thanks