No Disc Found Sims 3

[Crystle Rike]

Ijust bought a new macbook pro and I loaded my sims 3 game and all my expansions onto it; it all seemed to be going fine and the game was loading normally until I got to the game's menu screen and there was a pop up saying 'no game disc found', despite the fact that the game disc was in my cd drive.

Since then, I've tried the basic stuff like restarting, putting a different disc in, and downloading the digital versions of the games on origin; I've also started 3 chats with ea help. They suggested clearing the cache, uninstalling the games that were installed by disk and restarting...

It is a known issue, you need to register your games in Origin, uninstall the EP and download and install the digital version. All help and instructions you need are in this thread - -Sims-Mac/CURRENT-ISSUE-The-Sims-3-Disc-Authorisation-No-Disc-Errors/m-p...

Can you play a movie on that computer? It's a Macbook Pro so should be a DVD drive but, it might not be working correctly. You may need to ahve it serviced. I know it's new but, new computers can still have faulty part that were faulty when they were put in there.

I don't work or have any association with EA. I give advice to the best of my knowledge and cannot be held responsible for any damage done to your computer/game.

Please only contact me via PM when asked to do so.

The thing is that my new laptop doesn't have disc reader... so I need it to be digital. I browsed on Google but it didn't gave me a clear answer. I've found it on piracy sites, but I don't want to do something illegal. So I ask if the box/disc comes with an activation key that I can use or if there's a site who sell it legally in digital format.

Older Maxis games like SC4 and The Sims series use a copy protection method named "SafeDisc" on the CDs, which prevent playing via disc on Windows 10 or above. The reason for this is Microsoft deliberately removed a system file which is needed for SafeDisc to run. I was just in the middle of writing up a reply explaining about a possible method, involving virtually mounting the CD (without needing an actual disc drive). I'd done this before with SC4, but that was back on my Windows 7 laptop. Therefore nowadays, I suspect this won't be viable, unless by chance you have Windows 7.

Previously years ago on my laptop, I wanted to play SC4 and I only had the original disc-based version. This requires the CDs for installation, and also to play the game. I think with The Sims 1 likewise developed by Maxis around the same timeframe (early 2000s), it should work with the same method.

The method involves using a program to create a carbon copy of each CD as an ISO file. Then to mount this as a virtual drive. By "mount" this means the CD is temporarily loaded into memory, and makes it appear in the list (and functional just like an actual physical disc). The same applies to DVDs as well, although they'll just be larger in size due to their capacity. The first prerequisite however is you'll need access to a computer with an optical (disc) drive. Then the ISO file can be made, and transferred over to your laptop (where it can be mounted). Of course, this all assumes you'll get an original physical copy of the game. It is very wise to avoid those iffy pirated versions online.

The alternative would be to buy an external optical drive (which usually cost $30 or less), and connect that to your laptop via a USB cable. This would allow playing discs when needed, but the downside is it'd depend on having that connected each time you'd like to play the game. Like SC4, The Sims also has the requirement of starting with the game's play disc detected. External disc drives are quite portable however, and most of them feed from USB power and don't need a separate power supply.

Yes, my new laptop runs Windows 11. There's one thing that I don't know if I'm understanding well. A friend of mine has got a PC with Windows 7 and disk drive. So if I borrow his computer, make the ISO and then put it on a pendrive in my computer, that would work or it's going to have that protection too?

It's on Windows 7 (or lower) where we can still convince SafeDisc to run and allow the game to play. Making the ISO itself can be done on any system with a disc drive, and indeed transferred over via pendrive would be fine, but still using the ISO is the problem. This is because the ISO would be a carbon copy of the disc itself, so yes, it would still have the protection within it. This is the part Microsoft prevented, since they removed the security mechanism the game uses to start.

Unfortunately with using Windows 11 (or 10) there's no easy way to make these older Maxis games run natively. The only theoretical (and legal) method is to manually sign the secdrv.sys driver, but I've heard this gets very technical and I wouldn't personally recommend it, not least without backing up one's entire computer from a system image. The trouble is because Windows doesn't recognise the driver anymore (as they removed it), it'd need manually setting up to be authorised to run, which gets complicated. There's a post @rsc204 made here which mentions this. I'd only explore this route if you're feeling particularly adventurous, but I've no personal experience of attempting it myself.

Now, if there is an option for you to run XP or even Windows 7 in a virtual machine setup, that would open up other possibilities. A virtual machine is effectively a computer running inside a computer, and so that would make it more convenient and self-contained. However, it'd depend on having a legit license for the system. A possible option might be to use your old Windows XP license, but I'm not sure if that would work for the activation nowadays.

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