[gameprogrammer] Enough, already!

Hi folks:
I've been lurking the last while for a variety of personal RL reasons, but Bob may remember me. I thought someone here might be able to help an old-timer ;) with a problem i'm having with M$ anti-piracy vs media backup.
I confess up front, i'm seriously addicted to Age of Empires, developed by Ensemble and sold by Microsoft. And i understand big companies' concerns that people don't copy their games and hand freebies out to their friends. But i am pi$$ed that i cannot make a working backup of the software i paid for and have the legal right to use.
Awhile back, my game CD started showing a hairline crack off the center spindle. The crack got longer, then another one started on the other side, and finally the game went dead. Microsoft's answer was "buy another game". My position is that i already bought and paid for the dang game and it's their media that failed, and their paranoia that kept me from making a playable backup, so a non-evil company would at a minimum offer to exchange a broken media for a working replacement. Not M$, unfortunately.
So now i've paid twice for this game, and i /still/ can't make a playable backup, and i wonder whether anyone here knows how to get around their fool copy protection? Because i'm still gonna be playing it in 2019, and it will eventually go out of stock, and i'm not giving anything away or doing anything illegal, and dammit i have the right to back up my own media.
Now i've heard lots of theories, and i've tried CloneCD, and i'm only looking for advice from people who AKS (Actually Know Something), like how to copy the dang thing, and off-list reply is fine if we don't want a bunch of high-school kids being naughty (like they'd need help from us anyway). So if u feel like u can trust me that you're not being accessory to a felony and i just want a backup for my own use, and you AKS, please reply, on or off list as u see fit. 

TIA for any assistance - grant
PS: It's Age of Empires II, Conqueror's Expansion. AoE III will only play on XP, and i won't accept the EULA for that piece of... software. I run W2000, and have Nero, CloneCD and AnyDVD, all of which i use legally. 



---------------------
To unsubscribe go to http://gameprogrammer.com/mailinglist.html

Other related posts: