I honestly don't understand how the Daemon Tools system works.  From what JM says, I could use it and still play the game without my cd-rom functioning, but I don't know how because surely it would have to copy the disk first and it can't do that if the cd-rom won't recognise it.  He seems to be suggesting that it doesn't need to do that, but I am totally confused as to how it could copy it otherwise.  My Game Jackal profile has stopped working, it keeps asking for the cd-rom, so I can't play at all now. 

I'm copying all my files onto XDrive at the moment, which is a VERY slow process, but I'm wondering now if I actually need to.  The drive is partioned into two, one (C) and one (D) (100 gig each) and apparently all files on (C) will be lost (that's where Windows is, obviously), but it doesn't say the ones on (D) will, so it sounds as if they'll be OK.  The actual XP files are all on (D) somewhere, that's what it uses to put them back.

From what you've just said though, it sounds as if reformatting isn't going to make much difference.  As for downloading an image, that sounds most intriguing.  Do they work with Game Jackal?  Not that I would use one of course, I am just interested.  Might be the only thing that would get my daughter's PC working again.

I don't have the ASPI thing, that was the tool I meant that told me I hadn't got it.  As for reinstalling Windows, that's basically what it will be doing, but when I did it before it removed all my files.  I don't actually have an XP disk, it comes bundled with the PC.  I do have an XP Pro disk that goes with my son's computer, but I don't think that would work on here as this one uses Home.  Well I know it won't, because I tried it on my old PC once and it didn't work.

Something weird happened earlier.  I clicked on the Logitech Camera folder in My Computer to check what was in it before I removed the Logitech stuff (my son put it on, I don't want the thing!) and for some reason, when I clicked "Play" it made the DVD-RW icon disappear.  Probably just a coincidence, but I couldn't remove the Logitech Webcam software or driver in Add/Remove Programmes, I had to remove the former from the Uniinstall in the folder and I had to remove the driver folder manually.  I don't think either of those is the culprit though, because I rolled back to before they were installed at one time and nothing changed. 

Oh, and System Restore has basically deleted all my previous restore points for some reason.  They were all there right from when I got the PC in May, so I suppose the file had reached its limit or something with all the extra ones I've been doing.  Seems stupid to remove all of them, though.

Thanks for the link, I'd already found that and installed it.  I'm not sure what it is, but my driver still shows the exact same date, but I think the file has gone somewhere as I downloaded a utility that seemed to recognise it.  I've been seeing a lot about some sort of codec things (ASPI or something) that have to do with CD-ROMS and this pc apparently doesn't have them.  I downloaded some, but I couldn't get them to go on the pc.  Can't see that it's them though, as it worked perfectly without them before. 

I'm wondering whether to replace the driver files and any other system files that involve the cd-rom, that's something I haven't done yet.  They're all stored on the pc, but the only option I have is to Extract, not copy, so I'm not sure what that's all about.  I will probably just bite the bullet and try reformatting tomorrow and if it doesn't work, I'll just have to put-up with sending it away.  From what I can make-out, the engineers only do home call-outs if you've paid for the extended warranty and I haven't because I got a year's warranty when I bought it and there's still more than 8 months of it left.

That makes perfect sense, actually.  The only drawback is that with my old pc not working, my daughter is using my son's, which has a miniscule hard-drive and I don't think there's even enough free to take my Sims folder, which is a good 5GB.  Maybe I could burn the files straight onto a disk without adding them to the actual hard drive.

Anyway, System Restore has now decided to pack-in on me and has the latest restore point permanently squashed-in with no means of choosing another one.  I am quietly going mad here.  Haven't been able to go into the game all day and am getting withdrawals now.  I've basically run out of things to try apart from reformatting.  I will have to resort to it, because the last thing I want to have to do is send the PC away.

I use http://www.hostnexus.com and I've always been very pleased with them.  Their servers are right at the top in terms of speed and they're very reasonably priced.  The staff are also extremely helpful and they have an automatic help chat thingy that's manned most of the time. 

The pc was made by Acer and the drive was included with it (it's not even 4 months old yet).  Unfortunately, things have got worse insofar as I've been messing about so much in the Registry and so on that the Game Jackal image thing won't work anymore, despite several System Restores to times when previously it did.  Don't know if it means anything, but I went into the BIOS and although it shows the drive, it has 0's everywhere (no volume, etc.), although Device Manager still continues to insist it's working properly.  It did work briefly after I uninstalled it, but only very briefly and just for the one cd.

On a different note, I found quite a few Registry backups, but I can't install any of them because it's asking for a password.  What password? I've entered all the passwords I've ever had on this system and none of them work.  These must have been saved automatically and I have never been asked to set a password for anything like this.

If I can't get the Game Jackal thing to work I may as well bite the bullet and try restoring everything back to factory default.  If that doesn't work, it'll have to be a phone call to Acer on Monday.  I just need to find a virtual drive somewhere to store all my files, otherwise I will lose everything as obviously I can't put them onto cd, unless I can work out how to copy them onto the pc upstairs and then transfer them back (so far I've only worked out how to share and if I delete on one pc, it deletes it on the other, which would be a disaster).  Not sure whether the Game Jackal thing would still work if I did that, though.

Chances are the drive has just packed in, it sounds as if it's a pretty crappy one.  Seems a bit unlikely though, the ones on the other PC's are years old and they've never been any trouble at all. 

The drive is a HL-DT-ST DVDRRW GWA-4164B.  I tried your suggestion for getting into Safe Mode and it took 10 minutes to do so, the computer just hung after it had loaded a certain file the same as before (Googled it and thousands of people have the same problem).  I was really panicking, thinking I'd never get back in, so I just left the pc and went into another room and it finally made it.  All to no avail as the cd-rom won't work in Safe Mode either.

I do have a couple of questions.  Is the CD-ROM meant to be shown as a removable drive?  I swear it wasn't before, but it is now.  I have 4 other removable drives shown as well, but I have no idea what they are.  I could swear I had more before, but maybe I am just confused.

I also noticed that the location of the CD-ROM is shown as 0(0) in Device Manager - is that right?  Sounds to me as if it might have come loose or something.  It did work briefly when I uninstalled it, but then stopped again.  I'm just wondering if Windows isn't detecting it properly because it's showing as removable when it isn't, but I don't understand all that technical stuff.  Also, not sure if I mentioned it before, but the only option I have in the left-hand panel in My Computer, or if I right-click on the cd-rom, is to "Write these files to CD" - what files???  It's as if it's only seeing it as a writer and not as a player.  It even says this for blank disks and it makes no difference whether it's a CD or a DVD.

Ah yes, I do remember reading something along those lines, but I think I thought I had the right one.  This is all getting terribly confusing, don't you think?  Not to worry, I'll toddle-off now and download the right one and hopefully all will be well and I can go kill=off my surplus NPC's, now that I have JM's one-only mod whatever it's called and have re-installed Dizzy's Sitter mod (rhat should give a strong hint as to which surplus NPC's I am most looking forward to getting rid of).

Well, I downloaded the latest noage one, which if I understand correctly also allows non-friends to ask townies to grow-up?  Well if it does, it doesn't, as it were.  Haven't tried to see if it would work on NPC's because nobody has one as a best friend.

Onward and upward ...

No, what I meant was the dormies aren't getting any money.  From what I could gather, they would if the sslotfinalsfix mod wasn't updated to the one that goes with this mod, but in my case it wasn't making any difference.  It doesn't matter anyway, there's always kaching!

I just happened to log into my other account and the CD-drive worked with a CD containing image files.  I took it out and put my OFB disk in, but it wouldn't recognise that and even after I rebooted and put it back in, it still showed the folder for the image files disk.  This is what happened with the other account when it started going wrong.  What is puzzling is that it worked to start with, so I am now leaning very much towards a software problem.

Both accounts are exactly the same insofar as they're both administrator accounts with full privileges.

Does this help anyone work out the solution???  Could the fact that I recently set-up file-sharing with my son's computer upstairs have anything to do with it?  It was working fine after I set it up, though.  I've also noticed that whenever I right-click on the CD-ROM drive, it asks me if I want to write the files to a CD and I get an icon in the taskbar saying there are files waiting to be written to CD.  Could the write & playback functions somehow have become mixed-up?

This is becoming increasingly frustrating. 

The only problem with that Ste is that when they cease to become dormies (i.e., because one of our own Sims moves in and takes their place) they are going to get reset again.  That means they'll be going around with memories of making it to whatever semester level when they appear to have never taken a single final!  I suppose the easiest way round it is just to give them a major and forget about the final aspect.  I always move mine in when they are obviously destined to become the 'other half' of one of my playables anyway, which I am about to do with two I've just used this mod on. 

It'd be nice if they could at least keep their majors permanently, but as it stands they don't unless they're resident on the lot. Oh, and even though I used the ssfinalsfix mod that is supposed to give you the money when they take their final - it doesn't!  Curses.

I have quite a few custom skins binned in exactly the same way'  Although the majority of my non-playables have Maxis skin, I have three townies with binned custom skins and also a pizza delivery person (although in the case of the latter, I think I altered him myself as he's a redhead so I wanted him to have my redhead skin complete with freckles).  I also get babies born with those skins even though their parents don't have them, that happens quite often.  The binned custom hair comes up more often, I have quite a few non-playables with those.

Tested in my dorm tonight (not with the latest version) and it worked fine in terms of getting majors for the resident dormies (couldn't ask them to grow-up, but maybe that was because they're on campus).  What didn't work was getting majors for non-resident dormies (which is the majority of them, seeing as I only have three in my dorm).  It will allow me to set a major, but as soon as they leave the lot it disappears and goes back to Undeclared, or nothing at all if they're SS members (for them I had to set it with TwoJeffs phone books first, then set it again via your mod).  The non-residents will also go to their finals and get the Dean's List memory, but when they come back they lose that first half-semester and are back to the beginning again (the resident dormies keep it).

If you can somehow work out how to get the non-residents to keep their majors that'd be great (not bothered about the final exam bit), otherwise the majority of dormies are still going to have no major set.  Also, I know for a fact that if any of the resident dormies leave, they will go back to the beginning again and be Undeclared because it happened to an ex-dormie I'd made playable.  He fell out with his girlfriend, so I made him a dormie again and he lost all 3 of the semesters he'd gone through.  The game resets them obviously, but whether you can bypass that I have no idea.

I don't actually have Nero (the trial ran out), it was just a tool I downloaded today to check the drive with.  I can't remember what it's called because it's gone now as I did the System Restore to the day before.

I still don't know how I am meant to put the non-existent furry EP on without a cd-drive that can read it, but maybe someone will explain it to me s-l-o-w-l-y and with great patience ... or maybe I will just get a new cd-drive.  I still think there's some other problem causing it, but if I do a complete reinstall of XP I'll lose all my files as I can't save anything, unless I mess about doing it via file transfer ... maybe I will try to find a virtual drive online somewhere.  Anybody know of a good (free) one?  The main problem, of course, is whether my GameJackal profile would still work if I reinstalled XP, because if not I'd not be able to play the game at all and I'd go bananas.

OK, we might just be getting somewhere here.  I've done a lot of fiddling about and one of the things I did was download some Nero checker thing.  When it tried to access the cd-drive, it came up with an error message that I'd seen before when all this trouble started.  This is it:

C:\WINDOWS\system32\cmd.exe
C:\PROGRA~1\Symantec\S32EVNT1.dll. An installable Virtual Device Driver failed Dll initialization. Choose 'Close' to terminate the application

I hit ignore instead and discovered that the Nero checker thingy said there was no cd in Drive E (there was).  Entered the above error in Google and found a Microsoft page which gave instructions to remove a key from the Registry.  Did this and stopped getting the error.  I then went into the Registry and did a search for Symantec entries and removed them all, except a group it refused to let me delete which ha to do with drivers.  No change to my cd-drive, but the Game Jackal image no longer worked, it kept asking for the cd.

I have now gone back to yesterday with System Restore and Game Jackal is working again, so it seems that deleting either the key relating to the above error, or the other Symantec stuff, has affected it.  Could this possibly have to do with the CD not working?  It seems unlikely as I hadn't altered anything on the pc or downloaded anything, but it seems odd that I can't delete some of the keys, plus I have this Symantec program (Symantec Network Drivers Service) in services.msc that I have no way of removing and it will appear in start-up if I don't disable it ... the strange thing is, I removed Norton Anti-Virus & Firewall at least two months ago and have NO Symantec products on my pc now at all.  Of course, it does come bundled with the pc and is no doubt hidden in the restore files somewhere, but that doesn't explain why it will put itself into my start-up folder if I enable it in services.msc.  It's the word "drivers" that bothers me, because that's what the error was all about.

I've run a virus check and Ad-Aware, but nothing came up with those.  The only thing I can't do is see if the cd-drive is working in Safe Mode because I can't get into it.  Everytime I try, the splash screen disappears before I have chance to select anything and Windows just starts up. 

All this talk of pirates is totally confusing me.  I have to install the game from the cd first, before I can use Game Jackal to make a profile, and I won't be able to do that if the CD-ROM drive can't read it.  I don't think Game Jackal can run the game before I've actually installed it, because you have to put the registration number and everything in and set it all up.

Well, presuming you mean use Game Jackal, yes I can for now, but what happens when I want to install the furry EP that doesn't exist?  What I am trying to avoid having to do is send the pc away, because without it I will start blubbering in a corner and will need that shrink guy. I'd have to start doing normal things like cleaning the house and talking to people.  It'd only take an hour or so of that to send me completely over the edge.

Oh, another weird thing it did that forgot to mention.  I put the OFB disk in and it did its usual thing of not acknowledging its presence.  I then took it out and put my mp3 disk back in.  It made various stuttering nosies, then up popped all the folders for OFB???  Sounds like a serious delayed reaction, but how the hell did it bring those up when I'd taken the disk out and put another one in?  They wouldn't even go until I rebooted.

Yesterday when I put my OFB disk into the drive, it wasn't recognised.  I took it out and put it back and it worked.  Today, the same thing happened again and after several tries I had to give up and use my Game Jackal profile (which I tend to avoid now as I've used it so often it takes forever to go through all the numbers).  The disk worked fine on my son's computer and probably would have on my daughter's too, except that's even more poorly than this one insofar as it won't boot-up, apparently because the boot.ini file has been deleted and we have no XP Home disk to get it back, only an XP Pro which won't work.  But that's another problem ...

Anyway ... I tried a disk I'd put some data on and that worked, so did a disk with MP3 files on it, but none of my pre-recorded disks worked, not TS2 ones or any others.  Now, NO disks work.  The drive seems to be trying to read them, but after it's made a few noises it just stops dead.  I've tried using System Restore and various things like that, but nothing works.  The computer is only about 3 months old, so I can't see that the drive would fail that quickly - the ones on my other pc's are years old and they've never gone wrong.  All the other pc's have two, but unfortunately this only has one.  It's called a DVD-RW drive and when I put the details into Google, one link said that it's not really meant for cd's only dvd's (that person's had stopped working, too), but surely they're both the same in terms of playing a disk?

I'm a bit concerned with JM always going on about cd-drives blowing-up, not to mention the fact that the EP that doesn't exist is due out shortly.  I don't want to be without the pc if I can help it and I'm just wondering if there could be some corrupted file or whatever.  I do have a full restore facility, but I don't want to reformat unless I have to.  I know how to share files between the pc's, but I've still not worked out how to delete stuff from one and leave it on the other (if you even can), so I'd have to mess about putting all my neighbourhoods & downloads onto a cd on my son's computer, which would be a pain.

I do have several spare drives I could swop it with, except I've never been inside a computer in my life, plus they're all a horrible creamy-white and mine is nice and black (they'd look stupid on my tower) and I'd invalidate the guarantee by doing that anyway.  I just wondered really if it sounds like the problem is with the drive itself or something that's gone wrong with a file or something.  It seems odd that my own recorded disks worked when the bought ones didn't, which makes me wonder if somehow the drive wasn't recognising something it should have to do with copyrigiht protection or whatever.  Then again, none of them work now, so maybe not.

I tried it on a downtown lot last night and it sort of irritated me because it went so S-L-O-W-W_W_W_W_W_W_LY.  They did get fun from it, but very little, and I don't think the advertising is very high as it took a long time for anyone to use it.  My playable Sim went on it straight away after I asked her to switch it on, but she never went back to it.  The swingset at the other side of the path attracted far more attention, so nothing new there.  I don't know if they're only meant to go round once, but they always got off when their seats reached the bottom again.  Not surprising really, it probably took about an hour for them to go round.

It's still a very impressive object in terms of design (although I'd like some recolours of the actual base part), but it could do with some improvements in terms of gameplay.  Just makes me even more nostalgic for Makin' Magic.  Why haven't they recreated those amazing rides?  And I want the hole in the ground back ...

The noagecheck one doesn't work either, at least not for me, I just tried it.  Will try the notype one, or whatever it is.  That should work as I've never seen any dormies typing.

You'd have to do without me if it wasn't for the fact that I'm doing the "Ugh, let's get it over with" Uni stint at the moment.  I've changed the day I send the teens so I've got more than usual.  My dorm is full and I can't keep track of who's woo-hooing with who or who fancies who.  One of the females has changed her 'One' on the hour every hour almost and she's making me feel quite dizzy.  Luckily, 5 of the 8 want to join the Greek House, although that just means I'll have 9 to play in there instead and they'll probably all expire from Fly-Ridden Pizza Syndrome.

Er ... Ste???  There's like no notype and two noage up there. 

OK, I've got the option to change majors for dormies and send them to final exams, but nothing happens.  No icon appears and the dormies don't do anything, so I don't think it's working.  I'm using the lotfinalsfix mod as well, the one that pays out the money, because I thought it would be a good way to get some more money for the Secret Society if I send dormies to finals from there. 

Will try using the noagechecks version, to see if that makes any difference as that one doesn't appear to have been updated.  If not, I'll try one of the others, or maybe the other lotfinalsfix (hope it doesn't come to that, I WANT THE MONEY - could be payment for teaching them to study, providing them with beds to sleep in, YA's to woo-hoo, that sort of thing).

It certainly looks amazing, although it would seem it's not autonomous and there's a problem with it decreasing fun instead of increasing it.  Will be trying it out to see what's what.  I must admit I'd LOVE to see someone adapt it so they can fall out of it ... should be possible using the same whatevers for plummeting in the lift, although you don't actually see that, so maybe not.  Would be great if there could be random deaths from it, though.

I think a lot of the time they can be almost trained to want different things.  Since using TwoJeffs' autonomous CR, the majority of my Sims are obsessed with woo-hoo, regardless of aspiration.  No sooner have they woo-hooed once, they want to woo-hoo again.  Recently I even had a Romance female ask to have a baby and no, she wasn't pregnant at the time.  I wish they'd do this more often, at least it makes the game more interesting when they throw-up these strange wants.  Some I see very rarely, such as the want to look at the neighbours through the telescope.  Fricorith Tricou (Pleasure) rolls that one up practically everyday, but nobody else in the neighbourhood ever has.  His wife is also Pleasure but she's never once asked to do it, which is odd really as she only has 3 in Nice and Fricorith has more.