Problems with the JK2 CD

[derekdrygon]

Has anyone experienced any problems with the jedi knight 2 CD? I have purchased 2 seperate copies of the game, and both of them have had this problem on all 3 of my CD rom's I have tried.

 

Basicly what happens is this. I put the CD in the drive, it begins to spin up, and then it stops with a loud crunching noise. It continues to try this many times and eventually it gives me a blue screen saying it cannot read the cd in the drive

 

2 different computers, 3 different CD roms, 2 different copies of the game... I dont know what else to do here. These CD rom's I know are fine because EVERYTHING ELSE plays fine in them, except the JK2 game.

 

On one of the CD rom's I can get the game to work if I put the CD in the drive and disable autorun. It works for when I want to play on MP and it checks the CD ROM to make sure the disk is in the drive, however whenever I try to open the CD ROM drive in windows explorer it gives me the above error message

 

Funny thing is, both of these CD's worked fine for about 2 weeks, after which time they just stoped working and doing what i described above.

 

Any help would be appreciated. I really would li

 

 

 

Hitmann_D

[Camus]

Sounds like a bios problem you might want to contact hardware manufacurs about their bios'...

[derekdrygon]

Bios problem? How do you figure if everything else works. Please explain the reason behind it?

 

 

 

Hitmann_D

[Chiles4]

How old are the CD-ROM drives? And are they just plain vanilla CD-Rom drives? I have a 2-yr. old CD-ROM drive that will pretty much not "read" any new game. I've got a 1-yr. old burner that can read about 75% of games and I've got a brand new Lite-On DVD-Rom drive that can handle any game I've thrown at it (so far).

 

My guess would be that you either have 2 defective JK2 CDs (pretty unlikely). Or, your CD-Rom drives can't read the JK2 CD. From the noise they make, this sounds like the answer.

 

I don't think the plain CD-Rom drive technology has changed in the last 2 years. So, even if you buy a new one, it also might not be able to read the JK2 CD. It may have to do with the ability to read sub-channel data. The best "drive" to have (or buy) would be a late model DVD-Rom drive (unless you need a burner, then get a late-model burner). New DVD and CD-RW drives should all have to ability to read subchannel data.

 

So for anyone building a new rig, make sure you nix the CD drive idea and get a DVD-ROM drive instead (even if you don't intend to watch DVDs). You can get a very high-quality DVD drive for $45 online.

 

Sorry to get OT there. The fact that your drive could read the CD for two weeks and then stop reading it leaves me as clueless as it does you. Wish I could be more help. Do you know anybody with a late-model DVD or CD-RW drive in their box to test the theory out? And if the theory pans out, are you willing to shell out more $ for a new DVD drive? I got one a little while ago cuz I my current drives couldn't read NOLF...and they couldn't even read the System Shock 2 cd which I guess is 3 years old.

[Camus]

Okay... My reasoning is simple... You have it... It runs fine... you get something out there that changes some thing with your CD imput flow... So... It has to be something changed your cd rom bios or... something has gone in and changed your cd rom system... ie: I had a game it said couldnt run with auto run will you shut it down... key word was down and I didnt know that... I later beat the game and uninstalled it... went back to turning my auto run back on so I could play other games quicker... but auto run deleted needed files for auto run games to work... you could have got something on your pc that did something like that but did it to your Jedi Knight cd info in your hdd... Its a logical explination but I have no idea on how to fix it... :S

[Chiles4]

Derek, based on what Camus said you might want to try removing your CD-ROM drive from your system from within Windows and then reboot and let Windows re-detect the drive. It's not going to be a problem within your bios unless you are having IDE device detection problems within your bios - in which case you'd probably be having much worse problems than not being able to play JK2.

 

When I first put the Rune CD in my Creative 52x CD-Rom drive, it puked. On the second try it worked and worked thereafter. I've never heard of it "going the other way" though.

[derekdrygon]

Ive tried pulling the drivers in safe mode and rebooting, and it doesnt seem to help much. My systems are pretty clean, no ghost drivers or anything that could cause problems like this. Im absolutly baffled. Ill flash my bios if all else fails, but Im still reluctant to do it because i have programs that will need to be reinstalled after flashing it. Im going to borrow a friends DVD rom and plug that in first to test one more CD rom.

 

Thanks for all the advice

 

 

 

Hitmann_D

[Chiles4]

Im going to borrow a friends DVD rom and plug that in

first to test one more CD rom

Great idea!

 

Are you sure you want to flash your motherboard's bios? I really doubt that will help and is quite dangerous (I have no idea what your experience level is). I think the problem is isolated to your CD-ROM drive. I presume you have no other problems with this drive?

 

Good luck with the DVD drive - I hope you get some pleasantly surprising results. Please post back with your results - there are so many people with the same exact problem and I'd like to know if my advice is garbage or actually helping someone.