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absoluteweaklin's avatar
absoluteweaklin
6 years ago
Solved

NFS Carbon won't start up

So I found my old NFS Carbon disk, and I was excited to play it again after a long while. I put it in, it works perfectly fine through the installing process, everything seems good... Until I tried...
  • rcgldr's avatar
    rcgldr
    6 years ago

    Many of the older NFS media (DVD) based games use media based copy protection, such as safedisc or securerom, which install "device drivers" in order to perform the media check. Windows 10 disables installation of those device drivers, so you're stuck looking for a no-cd or no-dvd version of the game, or possibly the version from cosmi, which is a distributor licensed by EA to sell copies of NFS Carbon, sold on a PC DVD, but without an install key. It's possible that the cosmi version doesn't have any copy protection. I've seen a few of these for sale on Ebay, but unless the listing includes an image of the back of the case that you can zoom in on, in order to see that it's a cosmi version, there's no way to tell, other than perhaps the price, which is usually below $20 for a "new" copy of the game. I didn't find any examples of cosmi version for the collector's edition of Carbon. There are also Ebay listings for "download" versions of some NFS games, but I don't know who the distributors are, or if these are just hacked versions of Carbon, as they typically sell for less than $5. Here is an image of the back side of the cosmi version, which is a cardboard case (not a jewel case, but it's difficult to tell from an image). The cosmi name appears on the bottom right, just above the UPC sticker. You'll probably need to open the image in a new tab to zoom in enough to see the text.

rcgldr's avatar
rcgldr
6 years ago

Many of the older NFS media (DVD) based games use media based copy protection, such as safedisc or securerom, which install "device drivers" in order to perform the media check. Windows 10 disables installation of those device drivers, so you're stuck looking for a no-cd or no-dvd version of the game, or possibly the version from cosmi, which is a distributor licensed by EA to sell copies of NFS Carbon, sold on a PC DVD, but without an install key. It's possible that the cosmi version doesn't have any copy protection. I've seen a few of these for sale on Ebay, but unless the listing includes an image of the back of the case that you can zoom in on, in order to see that it's a cosmi version, there's no way to tell, other than perhaps the price, which is usually below $20 for a "new" copy of the game. I didn't find any examples of cosmi version for the collector's edition of Carbon. There are also Ebay listings for "download" versions of some NFS games, but I don't know who the distributors are, or if these are just hacked versions of Carbon, as they typically sell for less than $5. Here is an image of the back side of the cosmi version, which is a cardboard case (not a jewel case, but it's difficult to tell from an image). The cosmi name appears on the bottom right, just above the UPC sticker. You'll probably need to open the image in a new tab to zoom in enough to see the text.

  • absoluteweaklin's avatar
    absoluteweaklin
    6 years ago
    @rcgldr Would Safedisc (or whatever it was called) work on Windows 8? I've heard you can disable the feature that disables the device drivers, but i'm not sure. If you're wondering, I have a Windows 8 laptop that I could use.
    • rcgldr's avatar
      rcgldr
      6 years ago

      You should be able to install the device driver for either safedisc or securom with Windows 7 or Windows 8, probably just need administrator privileges to do this during install. I don't know if any special sequences are required. Windows 10 is the first version of Windows to completely lock out installing of those drivers.

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