I'm reinstalling for the first time in a loooong time, and I've bought two sets of the discs (lent the game to a friend, forgot, bought a new one and then he returned it) and both of them are failing on the second disc trying to read the arcanum1.dat file. Am I just hosed or is there something I can do to fix this? I can open the disc and I see it there just fine. Any ideas or am I just screwed?
Is the disc dirty? Both of them? Scratched? Fix those problems first. That fact that it's two disks makes me think it might be your optical drive instead. Is it broken? Have you had problems reading other media before? Also, you trying this on Vista/XP or something? That could affect it as well.
Sorry I've been oncall too long and not gotten enough sleep. I've got two sets, but one is currently MIA and the other is not working right. I really wish I knew why I said that. I think what I was originally aiming for is that I tried installing on my desktop and laptop and the second disc (with arcanum1.dat) is failing on both of them, so I don't think its a drive issue. and both are running XP, but I'm pretty sure I installed on my laptop before. Edit: is it possible to get just one specific dat file somewhere? or would that be piracy and I'm just SOL?
Do you know whether it is the installer that is having trouble with the dat file or is it that the dat file is corrupt? If it is just the installer having troubles manually installing it from the disc may be possible (I saw a thread about that in detail somewhere, having trouble locating it again though) Sorry for not being especially helpful
Any help is better than none. It seems to be the installer not finding it. I can open the CD and drill down and see it there. I'll try copying it over to see what happens.
Okay, that made a bit of a difference. When I try to copy it I get an I/O device error on my desktop. Will try to copy on my laptop when I get a chance.
Yeah, try pulling the .dat file off the CD manually if you can. If it's the drive, you can get a decent optical CD (or even DVD) drive for really cheap. Like, 10-20 dollars American or less cheap. Burners tend to be more expensive. And don't ask for the .dat file here, we don't take too kindly to piracy around these parts (even though your particular circumstance sucks). I wish you luck.
Yeah, I figure its time to replace it. these things seem to have about a 3 yr active life and I've had this one for about 5 yrs. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't asking for the dat. what I was trying to ask was if searching for the one file would be considered piracy, as I can't do anything with just the one file (I understand its a slippery slope). I'm just gonna be really depressed if I have to buy yet another copy of this. I will go buy it if I have to, because I keep coming back to this game. Oddly enough I never have played it all the way through. I just get a ways into it and end up not having time to get back to it and uninstall, only to come back again.
Holy Cow! I finally got it running. I had to copy everything off the disks, one file at a time (copying more than one at a time kept causing the I/O errors), then recreate the file structure. Trial and error got me the right combo of files to move from cd 2 to cd 1 to allow complete install. a couple patches later I'm up and running! thanks to all for your help!
So the thread I was looking for would have helped, now I feel guilty about giving up looking for it, it listed all the files and where they should be for you to use as a checklist
No no no...don't feel bad. I'm working on paring down the files I don't need to make an "Arcanum Lite" zip that I can store on a flash drive so I don't have to worry about this kinda thing happening again. Also then I can change out the unofficial patches and mods and such that I like when I want and keep them all in one spot.
