Hello,
I bought C&C Generals and the Zero Hour expansion pack on 4 x CD's long before Origin came out.
Right now I have a laptop with no DVD, but I still have both CD-Keys with me. Can I some how download the installation files from EA official site or use those keys in Origin, without buying new ones in C&C THE ULTIMATE COLLECTION?
Thank you.
Nope, sorry. You can redeem game keys on Origin, but only for products that exist as separate products in the Origin store. As far as I know, this is not the case for Generals / Zero Hour. You'll have to make isos on some other PC and transfer them via a usb drive or network.
On the subject of installing C&C Generals... if you do get it installed somehow you will probably still have trouble playing (unless you don't bother going for 'deep' CloneCD copies and just use no-cd cracks right away, that is 😉), since Microsoft terminated support for SafeDisc/Securom, which the game uses for its DRM. People will get a wholly incorrect "access denied, log in as administrator" kind of error, which actually indicates that the underlying system it tries to access is never loaded by Windows.
More info on this issue can be found here:
The issue has been discussed in detail in this thread here on the forum:
The posts by the user PADYWAN1 have some really good research and solutions.
"the first C&C game" is Tiberian Dawn, from 1995. I doubt you need that to play Generals: Zero Hour.
but, yes, you indeed need C&C Generals itself before you can play its expansion pack, since it uses a bunch of the same files. That's pretty obvious. Do you have an actual question?
