Mkay, N00b with Bucket of Questions

[BarkingPup]

(Heh, just noticed the Homestar Runner icon. Teh awesome)

 

Mkay, I am a serious N00b. I have pretty basic understandings of how my Laptop works and some minimal information on Software but other than that acronyms and other such 'tech-talk' goes right over my head.

 

With that in mind I have questions... many of them that I don't want to spam-thread and since they belong here I might as well lump them together in a ball of filth:

 

1) How do I find out what kind of CD's/DVD's my burner likes? (Bringing up Devices shows this: HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GSA-T10N ATA Device under DVD/CD-ROM drives do I'm geussing that's what I've got?)

 

2) I'm beginning to back up my games. I do use NO-CD/FIXED EXE cracks so I don't become infected with teh evil SecuROM and so they last longer but the fear of the house burning down has permeated my mind lately which has resulted in a scrambling for CD's and DVD's. Most of the games did perfectly fine until I hit some ooold ones (Specifically: Half Life Blue Shift, Warcraft (Orcs and Humans), Warcraft, Lu Wang is Shadow Warrior, Half Life Platinum Opposing Force, and Warcraft Expansion: Tides of Darkness). Some games surprised me like Starcraft which worked perfectly and, supposebly, Rage of Mages and Martian Gothic. I have not played any of them yet (mostly because my laptop can't handle them all at once) so I don't know if that works or not. It seems to encounter issues when I tell it to Create image file From Disc and it makes, instead of an ISO file, a CUE and BIN file. The CUE seems to need to be picked but the BIN has to be there for it to burn. Warcraft, Half Life, Shadow Warrior all had CUE files and this is the log that shows up when you try to burn it to a blank (CD) disc:

 

 

Rage of Mages and Martian Gothic seemed to have no troubles with the CUE (although I have not played them yet).

Um... log file... how do I do that?

I started putting the Files onto CD's when I discovered they're really small (most of them)... could that have something to with it?

 

3) Some games are getting errors when I try to create files for them (Specifically Age of Empires 2, Age of Empires 3, Civilisation 4):

 

 

Hmm... now I'm afraid they are the same..... Or maybe they're not...

But anyway, I haven't touched my other games since these (Sims, Sims2, Spore, Bioshock) because I know those have SecuROM and might not work for the Write Protected thing. I don't know if that's what's happening or not...

 

 

By the by: Running Acer 5100 laptop with Vista Home Premium 32-bit. 4GB RAM.256MB Ati Radeon Xpress series 1100. and the CD-rom's: Kodak CD-R52X. DVD's: TDK DVD-R 1-16X.

[LIGHTNING UK!]

You want Taiyo Yuden CD's and Taiyo Yuden/Verbatim DVDs.

 

If your discs won't read then they're either dirty/scratched or they're protected. Clean them and if they still don't work, give up because ImgBurn won't get around any protection on the disc.

[BarkingPup]

You want Taiyo Yuden CD's and Taiyo Yuden/Verbatim DVDs.

 

If your discs won't read then they're either dirty/scratched or they're protected. Clean them and if they still don't work, give up because ImgBurn won't get around any protection on the disc.

 

Can I get those through normal means (aka walk in, buy, walk out) or do I have to order online?

 

Hmmm... I shall clean them and see what happens. I would find it weird that Blizzard would protect Warcraft and not Starcraft but maybe it's just the age.

 

Thanks for the reply

[LOCOENG]

Typically the Taiyo Tudens are only available online.

 

Try:

 

http://www.supermediastore.com

http://www.meritline.com

http://www.rima.com