MA wont work: Program can not be run without original CD

VaNO · **Posted:** Tue Mar 16, 2004 11:56 am

Oppps... Sorry.. It's not present at download page.
Direct link to Australian patch:
http://www.massiveassault.com/download/ ... .1.191.exe

It will become available on download page soon.

shoefish · **Posted:** Tue Mar 16, 2004 8:13 pm

thanks a bunch _b

lovely game ~

Vic · **Posted:** Thu Mar 18, 2004 5:52 am

shoefish wrote:

hi~

just bought the game in australia, demo was top notch n i bought it the day after i played it wd _b

im having similar problem to angelhost except it only happens after i apply the matrix patch.

Dear Australian MA players.
There is a special AUSTRALIAN Patch, which can be found here:

http://www.massiveassault.com/patch.php

And only Australian patches must be applied to Australian MA versions.
If you install Matrix or European Patch - yes, you will have problems, because on those territories other copy protection systems were used.

Strategos · **Posted:** Thu Mar 18, 2004 7:11 am

Vic wrote:

POSTED BY: Erik Rutins (Matrix Forum Member)
Angelghost,

Please read through the below, I believe it will solve the problem you are experiencing:

Quote:

angelghost:

This particular flavour happens to have some issues running from CD/ROM drives configured as Slave devices within your computer.

All common PC's these days are IDE based, with capacity for 2 devices on
2 channels. Each Channel supports a Master and a Slave device.

If you have multiple CD/ROM/DVD/RW drives, you will probably find that one of them is configured as a Master, and putting the MA CD in that drive resolves your problem.

If you happen to be in the situation where you do not have a CD/ROM in your system that is configured as a Master, you need to adjust your devices around a little. In the worst case situation, you will have to go to your local computer store and buy a $10 IDE cable and shift your CD/ROM from the Slave position on the first channel to the Master position on the second channel.

Each of your devices (hard drive, cd/rom, dvd, etc) has some little jumpers that identify how to adjust between master and slave. If you cannot see a diagram on the unit, write down the part name/model and visit the manufacturers web site for the little chart of what the jumpers do.

Your first hard drive (the one your operating system is installed on) must be primary on channel 1. The other 3 can be mixed and matched as required as long as you do not configure a device as a slave with no master.

If this is too technical for you, you can find a local computer shop that can do the swap for a couple of bucks as it really is trivial for anyone who knows whats inside the case.

Just a FYI: This is not just a Matrix issue, Microsoft has the exact same problem as they use the same product for copy protection. Sooner or later you will have to have this fixed as you will buy a new game and find it does not work out of the box for this very same reason.

Trying to install/run from your other CD drive may help, but the best long term solution is to follow the arrangement described above. Let me know if this helps.

Regards,

- Erik

Designer / Programmer / Matrix Games

I have two CD-RW drives in my computer and had the same problem, so I unplugged the weaker of the two and now I have no more problems.

Asmodeous · **Posted:** Thu Mar 18, 2004 9:20 am

Harrum.

At home I have no problems. I have 2 drives in the computer, a CD-Rom (master) and a CD-RW (slave), it won't run from the Rom, but it runs from the RW. Which I think is inherently funny given the context of the solution here.

At work, the computer has 1 HD and 1 CD-Rom, both on their own channels, and the CD-Rom will not read the CD to play the game (installs fine) no matter how I wrestle with it to do it (as I mentioned before).

Microsoft Games may use the same CD protection, but I have no problems, either at work or at home (except sometimes the generic POS cdrom will just decide it doesn't want to read the CD anymore and just spin it a lot), with any of their software, whereas at work the machines I work on refuse to read the MA cd.

This may be an anamoly. I understand that fully. It may also have to do with the access levels allowed on the machine, we're not given FULL admin access, which may directly correlate.

Personally, I understand that developers are kinda screwed as to whether or not there's any copy protection on a disc, but the publishers really need to learn that things like CD Keys and registered accounts for online play (which is the crux of ANY game these days), especially coupled with something like PunkBuster or equivalent that checks those keys work a thousand times better than any on-disc CD Protection ever will, AND the people who get legit copies don't get the shaft for it.

Me.

MA wont work: Program can not be run without original CD

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