CloneCD: Copying SecuROM 4.8x protected games

nice work philamber

[Note: Guide can now be found here.]

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Last edited by philamber; 23-11-2003 at 23:18.

excellent and well written bro

thats it lay down the law man !!!!

philamber's pretty cool for an Aussie you know

This is why I come to the fourms for people like you =) But I find using WINISO and burning with Fireburner better off. Cause ever since I tried copying WarCraft III with Clone CD when it first came out I have a scratch on the disc now. Atleast with WINISO I have the game ISO on my Hard Drive so I don't have to put the CD in anymore to copy it. But I understand the real challenge is 1:1

Thank you very much for this guide.

I have one question. You write that the best Blindwrite version for SecuRom 4.8x is 4.2.5 - does that mean that I have to use the BWA builder from that version in order to create a good .bwa file for the CloneD/Twinpeak method or can I use the latest version (currently 4.3)?

The fact that 4.2.5 is the best version of blindwrite for securom back-ups doesn't mean that its version of the bwa builder is the best. Most people regard that from 4.2.8 and 4.2.9 as superior to that from 4.2.5.

You can almost certainly use the bwa builder from 4.3, though I haven't tested that version personally. In any case, try it for yourself and let us know what your results are like.

Yeah, and I even know how to say Whenuapai (and it doesn't start like White)

oh yeah ... tnakx man ... this is a REALY good way to copy games like UT2003 ... I'll do my Unreal2 cd later ... since I don't play that alot since I have walkthru that game already ( easy ) , by Ut2003 is used all the time , and I have used up one cdr backup of that game aready ... and thanks again

If a copy made with this method does not want to run at all: Read a CloneCD of the copy. If it shows bad sectors, although the original disc does not have any, then you can stop any further attempts. Your drive can then not read twinsectors and will never work with this method

Geez I guess I was not supposed to have been able to have copied UT 2003 then?

I used CloneCD 4 BETA 9. Made an image, dropped a blank CD in, never touched a setting, choose GameCD and burnt a perfect copy!

Done NASCAR 2003 also. It also uses SecuROM latest.

Read this thread please; http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread....threadid=65042

Cheers,
Mike
PS I forgot, I can read my copies off my Kenwood 72X just as easy as I can my burner!

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Last edited by Mike360000; 26-02-2003 at 09:21.

This has been reported, it's a bug in SecuROM.

Could you elaborate more on this?
Consider that I've already copied 2 different games using this protection.

Cheers,
Mike

As a result of a bug, there is the occasional fluke copy of securom 4.8x that's successful without twinpeak patching. Similarly there have been occasional fluke copies of cd-cops and starforce protected cds in the past. Just consider yourself very lucky.

Remember that even olli says that CloneCD can't copy securom 4.8x by itself. From this thread:

"
quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by Riko
First sorry for my English . Is this version able to copy Securom*NEW* v4 ??? Or I must use TwinPeaks??? Thanx for answer.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



As physical layout isn't emulated yet by HideCDR, SecuROM "SuperNew", ProtectCD5 and StarForce won't work yet.

I have saved the fun for a future (maybe the next?) release.

Cheers,

Olli"

Thnx for all the detailed info man!
Great job, well written!

@Philamber: Thanks a million dude ! found the solution to my problems in here ! you the man !

@The_matrix: Dutch MOUNTAINS??? limburg zekers? hehehe

This is a really comprehensive post! Thanks so much philamber, I really appriecate this info. Goes to show that if a jobs worth doing, its worth doing well!

Unusually, I found that I'm getting the best bwa files reading at 48x on my Asus CRW-4816A. These discs are working on three different drives on my three machines. Guess I'm just lucky...

Cheers fella. Just what I wanted to know!
CM4 done as above.

This has got to be one of the most informative posts I have seen ever. Thank you very much for your hard work. I come here a lot but post very little, use the search find what I need and go. So I decided to say thanx and to let you know that I made a copy of cm4 using the same method. One bit of advice that I have found to be one of the best money savers of all is just to buy a few CD-RW try and try again. NO coasters man. Once again thank you and thanx for a brilliant forum.

First off, thanks for posting such a thorough and clear explanation! I especially like the preemptive strike on noobs and flame-baiters.

QUESTION: With a patched CloneCD image, will it work with the VirtualCD feature?

Reason: I hate having to load the CD every time I want to play. I also hate having my CD drive spin up just so it can run it's check. Running UT2003 benchmark is brutal on the drive!

The Q3A guys were generous enough to remove CD checking in a patch. I am more likely to play Q3A over UT2K3 just because I don't have to find and load the stupid CD.

In fact, I would pay a small premium to the game developer to remove the copy protection check. I hate it that much!

No idea but I seriously doubt it. Try it and report back.

dear friend, i´m a spanish reader of this great site. i read your article and you opened my brain to a great solution
i bought my lord of the rings:the fellowship of the ring in spanish version and due to ussage it started to break
i have done all the steps you said and after many bwa files who fail i get one that works
so only say thanks and if you want my bwa file only send an e-mail to egarralaga@hotmail.com and ask for it and say what to do and i´ll send it
sincerly yours
quique

Thanks for the inscrutions. They worked..but i just wanted to post to let people known one thing. I did this and used a CD-RW just to be sure, and at the very end, it failed! Yet, the CD was still able to be used to launch the game. I'm not sure if it will install, but that wasn't the problem. Thanks again.

Thanks a million fella,
used this method and it worked fine for Champ Manager 4. The original was picking up a scratch or two and had become unreadable in my Liteon DVD drive and just about playable in my Liteon RW. Did this and the BWA file took very little time using just the RW drive for all tasks and now the backup works fine in the dvd drive.(Cue Mr.Burns...Excellent!)
Thanks for saving me the tiem and money of spending another £24 on this software. Will a profile ever be made for CloneCD which will automatically backup this type of protection? I wonder.

Thanks again...
The saintly one.

I tested the patched UT2003 CCD image with CloneCD's virtualdrive - it does not work. .

BTW, I found that the only speed that worked on my LITEON 48246S was max. (48X) Any lower speed sent BWA builder into the twilight zone with an absolutely horrible graph. This was on Win2K.

I also found that I got the best BWA if I shut down as much background processes as possible, set BWA builder priority to realtime, and turned off the graph during the BWA build processing. With this "well built" BWA, my copied CD loads as quickly as the original.

The copy works great in the LITEON drive that I created it in, but the cd check gets completely locked up when I try to use the copy in my DVD reader (Pioneer DVD-106S). Anyone know what that would be? The only solution is to reboot. I can't even kill the process or eject the CD.

I can provide short elaboration for each of your paragraphs

• This is expected behaviour as the VD only deals with pure and native CloneCD image files - a patched file would be expected to ill-behave
• The builder is optimised for Lite-On at max speed
• This is true for many apps...DV editing, rendering, backup software etc
• This depends on the quality of the .BWA and resultant files. It also depends on the media and the burn as there are many factors in the actual burn