Launch Failed (Need Your CD To Play)

posted on December 10th, 2010, 1:47 am

I'm running Win7(64bit) and I'm receiving the "You need your own CD to play" error when I attempt to launch a game.  I have the ArmadaII disc in the drive, but I cannot forcibly direct FleetOps to check for it. 

Any suggestions?

I searched the forum but could not find a clear solution.

posted on December 10th, 2010, 2:22 am

I can think of two possibilities, both of them unlikely.

Is your disc drive (the one the disc is in) have a nonstandard name (like if it's your C drive) so FO wouldn't think to check there?
Is the disk damaged or in need of cleaning?

posted on December 10th, 2010, 2:32 am

Did you try uninstalling the drivers for your disk drive, and then rebooting your computer?  It will re-find the hardware and then update the drivers.  This is what I would try anyway. 

posted on December 10th, 2010, 4:00 am

Thanks for your replies.

The disc drives are F: and G:, I've tried both with no success.  I also tried a system reboot, but no luck. 

This is very upsetting.  I loved this game back in the day, and I was excited to play it again after so many years with the FleetOps update.  But, although everything looks good, I'm frustrated by a techincal glitch that I cannot work around.

Arg!

posted on December 10th, 2010, 8:53 am

Try to delete all of your Armada II contents from your macine, reboot, install A2 and FO, reboot again and try it now.
And if it still doesn't work, then wait until you have to reinstall your Windows. Sometimes it can do things like this...

posted on December 10th, 2010, 9:09 am

also u could just use an armada nocd exe. Doca made one himself i believe, and put it on game copy world.

in fleetops u want the file in the Data folder called Armada2.ldl (not exe) replace that with the nocd exe, ie rename the nocd exe to ldl and copy over the one in the Data folder. Then it should work without the disk.

posted on December 10th, 2010, 4:19 pm

I downloaded Doca's 14KB nocd.exe from gamecopyworld.com, then renamed the full file name to "armada2.ldl", then copied it into the Data directory.  Thereby overwritting the original 2MB ldl file. Unfortunately, the game won't open at all now

(I have since restored the old ldl file that was able to open the game to the menus)

Maybe I misunderstood your instructions?

posted on December 10th, 2010, 4:26 pm

Wait - I downloaded Doca's other nocd.exe and this one, per the txt instructions, just replaces the armada2.exe in the data directory... and it worked!!!  Oh man, i feel i'm going to have a VERY unproductive day at work!! 

Thanks for your help!!

posted on December 10th, 2010, 4:35 pm

Oh, so you're playing during work. Good boy 

posted on December 10th, 2010, 5:44 pm

doca said to replace the ldl file with the nocd

Star Trek Armada II: Fleet Operations - Armada2.exe technical side note (no-cd patches, virus alerts)

but if you have replaced the armada2.exe file and it worked then i dont think you should change anything. if it aint broke dont try fix it

happy gaming.

posted on December 15th, 2010, 2:10 pm

Id' love to see a new howto for the nocd, as the problem in my case is, I have a CD but I have no drive, so i need to mount it via network, which sucks...

posted on December 15th, 2010, 2:41 pm

Id' love to see a new howto for the nocd, as the problem in my case is, I have a CD but I have no drive, so i need to mount it via network, which sucks...

why dont u make a disk image of it. armada 2 should work fine with a simple iso image mounted in daemon tools or alcohol 120.

posted on December 15th, 2010, 3:12 pm

I could do that, but I would prefere a rather simple nocd solution. So I don't need to install deamon tools on every pc.

posted on December 15th, 2010, 10:59 pm

I could do that, but I would prefere a rather simple nocd solution. So I don't need to install deamon tools on every pc.

as far as i know, doca's nocd patch works fine. i mean gamecopy world should have several nocds for armada 2 which are perfectly legal as u have a legit armada 2 cd.

posted on November 1st, 2015, 3:15 am

How do I get the .EXE to convert into an .ldl file?