Mostly asking because I’ve never used these before due to never needing to. That, and I have a few old disc based PC games that I’d love to be able to straight up boot without the game disc. These are games I could just pirate, but I figure I already own them in disc, so I’d rather see if there are any reputable places with no-disc patches. The places I’ve looked in the megathread don’t have what I’m looking for.

Closest they have is either a link to the game on another platform in the case of My Abandonware due to it being sold, or a link to just straight up pirate the full thing in the case of Magipack Games. I’ve also done some digging on the Internet Archive but have yet to yield results (probably because I suck at finding things there). Still gonna keep looking there, but any helpful info would be much appreciated.

I don’t think I can share the game names, even in DM, due to the rules here, so site mainpages are my best shot.

    • °˖✧ ipha ✧˖°@lemm.eeEnglish
      20·
      6 months ago

      You’ve just dredged up a core memory! I can’t believe they’re still around and I haven’t used a CD drive in so long that I’ve forgotten that no-CD patches were a thing.

      • BearOfaTime@lemm.eeEnglish
        1·
        6 months ago

        Right?

        I’d forgotten about them for years… Went to play an old game the other day and it came to mind…somehow remembered it after a couple days

    • Bianca_0089@lemmy.todayEnglish
      21·
      6 months ago

      oooh nostalgic.

      What I like about gamecopyworld: it’s been around forever!

      What I hate: no standards. Sometimes you’ll find cracks for a win98 game or an XP game and they’ll require sys/kernel functionality that didn’t exist until windows 7. I mean… what if I wanna play period correct? And NOT on windows 7 or newer?

    • Dizzy Devil Ducky@lemm.eeOPEnglish
      21·
      6 months ago

      I’ll have to quickly check there to see if they have what I need. Thanks.

      Edit:

      This was a site I got a file that caused Windows Defender to go ballistics ony desktop a few years back. Couldn’t remember the name. Probably gonna find a patch and see what virustotal says.

      • DudeDudenson@lemmings.worldEnglish
        8·
        6 months ago

        Well the no CD patch is usually a crack for the game so yeah it kinda makes sense that antivirus software would identify it as such. Most of the time windows even identifies the “threat” as a keygen or a crack after deleting it.

        It’s pretty normal in the world of piracy

  • kurasai@lemmy.mlEnglish
    3·
    6 months ago

    You can use something like InfraRecorder to save your existing CD into an ISO file, and then use Virtual CloneDrive to emulate having a CD-ROM drive and mount the ISO.

    I used an older form of this method in the past as I was tired of finding no cd patches whenever I had game updates break the functionality. Depending on the game’s DRM, it may not allow using an emulated drive, so ymmv. I have personally not had issues with the method myself. Since then I have digitally bought titles from Steam.

    Hope this helps!