please insert the cd!? its in there! help please!

[nockienoo]

hi there. thief 3 installs fine but when i come to load the game i get the load up screen from pc gamer (budget version) and the a delay of about 30 secs then a pop up appears with 'please insert the theif 3 game disk into dvd-rom drive' obviously the dvd is alredy in the dvd drive! after i click ok, if i go into my computer the dvd drive has now dissapeared! i have to restart windows for the dvd drive to appear in my computer again. it also disapears from devices in control panel...wierd! i really wanna play the game can u help? my system is:

amd athalon 3500+ 2.2 gig processor
1 gig ram
ati radeon x1800xt graphics card (bought specially for theif 3)
windows xp up to date ati drivers and the theif 3 patch from this site
the dvd-rom is a 16 speed
thanx every1

[AlexDenton]

I believe it's your DVD drive that's causing the problems, unless perhaps there are scratches on the disc.

[Peter Smith]

I have not heard of a drive disappearing from view. I would think that if there were a defect in the disk the drive would still be there but you would get a read error. So, I suspect something is wrong with the drive. How does it behave with other data DVD's? Do you have any other games on DVD that have copy protection? How do they work? If they work and Thief does not, it may be some funny copy protection issue. Let us know if you can narrow it down a little.

One thing you might try is to go to the drive manufacturer's web site and download / install the latest firmware and drivers.

[AlexDenton]

I've had this happen to me before when I was used severely scratched discs; Windows has some sort of silent error that goes on and then it "loses" (dismounts) the drive.

[Peter Smith]

OK, thanks for the clarification, Alex. I've never had a scratched CD, so no personal experience. Then, obviously, do check the condition of your disk before doing anything else.

[LittleSpender]

I seem to remember a few games not working on my system when I had CD Emulation software installed. Some ill-conceived attempt at copy protection I assume.

I had to uninstall it (disabling didn't work). Off-hand I can't remember if ThiefS was one of these but if you've got anything like Alcohol or CloneCD installed try removing it.