PTW Problem

[Narulas]

It's quite legitimate, as is the Civ3 copy. The CD-Rom is new, the comp is new.

[MattH]

What has Firaxis/Infogrames said? Try callling/mailing them.

[Narulas]

Alright, I e-mailed Firaxis/Infogrames and the problem is most likely related to the cd-rom. Apparently the one on the computer I use says Atapi and it seems that's a bad thing. They recommeded I find new firmware, but I don't know what that is or where to find it...Can any of you help?

[MoonWolf]

Atapi is just a sort of a standard. I find it strange if it's the firmware, but you can try.

First, you need to find out the brand and model of your drive. If you have a pre-build computer, check the manual or the brand's website. If you have built it yourself, you should know now it..

Next, go the website for the producer of the drive, find support/download and find your drive. If the firmware is available, you should find it here with instructions how do upgrade your drive with it.

Often you need to boot you computer via a bootable DOS-floppy or -CD to boot into a clean DOS-mode and lauch the upgrade from there.

What firmware is: Firmware is a kind of BIOS to the drive. It contains information about it (model, speed etc) and instructions how it works. An example of this, is the cracks that some people have made to make DVD-ROMs zone free. They have written firmware for the specified unit that tells the unit it's multiregion (region 0)

What kind of OS do you run?

[Narulas]

I run Windows XP

[Narulas]

Alright, I would like to nominate myself for the idiot of the year award. I was sitting around brooding about not being able to play my Play the World copy when I had a rather novel idea...Why not stick the CD in the CD-write drive...and what do you know, it installs perfectly. It's this kind of thing that makes me wonder if I should lay off the booze...

[MoonWolf]

But it still seems to be a problem with your CD-ROM though... Maybe it's faulty even it's new... Good luck!

[steven8r]

Originally posted by MoonWolf


But it still seems to be a problem with your CD-ROM though... Maybe it's faulty even it's new... Good luck!

MoonWolf,

It's probably not a problem w/ the actual drive, but the drive letter assigned to the drive. I've found that if you have multiple CD drives (CD, CD-RW, CDR, DVD, whatever) most games (that check the CD for validity) will only install from one drive--usually the lowest letter.

[steven8r]

Narulas,

ATAPI is an acronym for something that I have since forgotten the name of. It is a standard for connecting hard disk drives and/or CD drives to an IDE connection.

Don't let anyone tell you that your having an ATAPI drive is the problem--they're just blowing smoke.

If you have an IBM compatible computer, you are using ATAPI CD's and HD's (unless you use SCSI--in which case you'd probably know).

ATAPI is the standard. Don't let them try to 'snow' you.

[Narulas]

Well this is wonderful...The game (PTW 1.14) crashes every single time after only a handful of turns. It gives me some error message concerning Civilization3X.exe...

[Narulas]

Hmm. Doesn't seem to crash when played from the write drive either. Maybe it is that letter thing...

[steven8r]

Originally posted by Narulas
Hmm. Doesn't seem to crash when played from the write drive either. Maybe it is that letter thing...

That shall become your 'install/play disk' drive.

Don't use the other one for installs or games. You can still probably use it for music or whatever, just don't install or run games (or other programs) from that drive.

Glad to hear that it's working now.

Enjoy the game.