Help with disc

[Star21Sim 5]

Hi, I love the SimCity 4 game, but...  Complete downfall lately that the disc won't play in the disc drive..  I don't hear it spin..  So, I haven't played in a while, I did however lightly cleaned the laser disc, and it still didn't work..  So...  I don't know a new laptop I should get or someone might tell on how to fix the problem...  So I can go back to being the mayor, and my city however is saved, but if I need to get a new laptop, how do I have my saved city transferred to the new laptop..  Thanks..

[Ltw 401]

I think the problem is your CD-drive. If the disc doesn't spin that usually indicates a hardware problem. If the disc is the problem it should spin but in that case your CD-drive doesn't recognize it or Windows shows an error. Do you encounter the same problem with other discs?

I would recommend buying Simcity 4 on Steam. It doesn't cost that much and it is fully patched. Besides, you can download it anytime and on any computer you want. Besides, if you would buy a new laptop some day in the future chances are quite big it doesn't have a CD-drive at all. The technology is quite old and a lot of manufactures don't even bother putting a CD-drive in there, they often prefer a second hard-drive instead.

[rsc204 21,863]

As mentioned, try another disk in the drive, if that also doesn't spin, I'd assume the drive is broken, they are cheap enough to replace, assuming you can get the thing out easily, really depends on the manufacturer though. I wouldn't buy a new computer because of a broken disk drive though, unless you actually want/need a new laptop, it will cost a lot more money than paying someone to replace the broken drive. It's also worth considering if you actually need a disk drive, most modern software and even Windows can be installed either via USB stick or the Internet, depending on your needs, you may find you can run a computer without one just fine.

If you do decide to go the digital route, I wouldn't buy a DRM copy on Steam that's been modified from the original causing a bunch of unnecessary headaches in the process. Much better to go with the DRM-Free vendors such as GOG, I believe it was less than $5 recently there too.

[timmie 988]

Disk drives are really cheap. My laptop doesn't have a cd drive so I bought an external one for less than 30 euros. If the drive is broken (it seems so) and you're not going to replace it, the best option is to buy the game online. I bought it on Gamersgate, it's the complete, patched game, no DRM.