DescentBB

Hello, fellow pilots!

I seem to have scratched a CD...My Descent 3 CD in fact.
I was noticing a lot of unnecessary read action coming from my CD Drive, and when I opened it up, lo and behold, there it was -- spinning at full speed and shaving off bits of plastic like no tomorrow. I managed to stop the CD before any major-er harm came to it. There is now a ring of scratches on the very outer edges of the CD.

Oddly enough, the CD is readable, and I can launch Descent 3. However, I do not want to play a game with it, for fear of causing further damage.

I have a full (980 Meg+Merc, I think) install of D3 on my computer at the moment with (soon to be) the no-CD 1.4 patch (not crack or warez). I'd like to burn a copy of Disc One, which is still readable, to a point. There is a 48-megabyte file entitled \"zrun.dcb\" that is unreadable and crashes Windows if I try to copy it, move it, or otherwise modify it, due to the scratch.

Does anyone:
A) Have a utility I could use to recover and copy this file?
B) Have a copy of Descent 3, Disc One? If you could post the file somewhere that would be great.

Allow me to save my ass here/explain B:
I do not know what zrun.dcb does at all. Not even the mighty Google knows what this file is. If you check the link. The only result, if there is one, is this post or the one on WarBoards, which is the same thing. I doubt that by posting one forty-some-odd-megabyte file somewhere will do much harm at all, considering nobody on the 'net has said what it does. I would like to have a fully-functioning Disc One to roll back to, should the need arise.

Thanks for any help!

-Mr. Necktie

D3 only used a disc check.

you can just dump it with you local cd burning software.

tho, you may replace your cd drive. disc should go into a cd drive and come out untouched.

That happend to me a while ago, except my descent 3 cd exploded in the cd drive. opened the cd tray and little pieces fell out.

There is freeware software out there that can read from a disk and make an ISO image file, try using one of those to make an exact copy of the disk. If it is still readable that is.

You also probably want to invest in a new CDRW/DVD burner drive, $30 can get you a very nice drive like the Pioneer 20x DVD burner I have (they burn CDs too).

Thanks very much for the suggestions.

I don't think I'll be replacing my CD Drive yet though. I just installed a back-up utility and I think it imaged my CD Drive somehow... :/
I've also come to believe that it's attempting to image non-existent floppies in that drive, too.

I've also got a DVD Drive as a secondary, so I'll probably be using that.

Thank you all very much!

-Mr. Necktie

Mr. Necktie wrote:Thanks very much for the suggestions.

I don't think I'll be replacing my CD Drive yet though. I just installed a back-up utility and I think it imaged my CD Drive somehow... :/
I've also come to believe that it's attempting to image non-existent floppies in that drive, too.

I've also got a DVD Drive as a secondary, so I'll probably be using that.

Thank you all very much!

-Mr. Necktie

You can capture an ISO of a disc (It will even grab the offending file you speak of) and just keep the ISO file on your Hard drive until you have a CD burner. At that point it's just blowing the ISO up back onto a disc.

And if you are pressed for hard drive space, don't forget to compress it with maximum zip (or even better 7zip) compression. It is easy to get the image file almost 200 MB smaller that way.

Cool. Thanks! I'll try the ISO image as soon as I can -- I'm hoping to be able to do so ASAP. I'm looking forward to getting back into D3!

-Mr. Necktie

What about that no cd util that someone made, so the program does not do the cd check. Or is that a no no on the board?

Well, the ISO didn't work. I was able to get 659 of the 663 megs on the first go...I'll try again in a few minutes, after I search for a possible backup I may have stashed somewhere.

For now though, the call goes out for someone to post zrun.dcb at their earliest convenience. Sorry if it's not legal to post 48 megs of unknown files, but what's the alternative? This is Descent 3 on the line!

-Mr. Necktie

EDIT: 659 on the second try, too. Four megs unreadable. If posting zrun.dcb is illegal here, please remove this as necessary.

Mr. Necktie wrote:....Sorry if it's not legal to post 48 megs of unknown files, but what's the alternative? This is Descent 3 on the line!

eBay

I found the link to the no cd in another post. At least you can play your installed game untill you find a replacement.

http://www.descent3.com/patch/D3_1.4_Patch.exe

Cuda68 wrote:I found the link to the no cd in another post. At least you can play your installed game untill you find a replacement.

http://www.descent3.com/patch/D3_1.4_Patch.exe

yeah find your replacement here

just do not grab the one with the Pink Cd1, those are bad pressed version that came with an old linksys hub networking kit autorun file is corrupt on that pink puppy

Worse comes to worst, you can pick up a new sealed copy of Descent 3 with the Mercenary pack included for around $10 on eBay these days. =)