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