Some people have had problems with out of date video card drivers, or with not having the latest critical updates for Windows, though I don't think that should be an issue until getting into the game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