Funguses are eating my WC games

Starkey

Starkey

Avenging Rooster
My house has a high humidity problem and I think that has done some damage to my WC CDs, specially WC4 and WCP.

It could be just that the CDs are old. However, I think it could be some problems with fungi, because of the humidity that creates a good enviornment for them to develop. Luckily, my WC3 and Privateer CDs are fine.

In any case, little black lines - as if the CDs have been scratched internally - are showing up in small parts of some WC4 CDs. Also, my #1 and #2 WCP CDs have little *holes* on them, so that you can see through those tiny holes.

That is already causing some problems, specially with the FMV - I have to skip the WC4 introduction when Blair starts talking to the barman and also some WCP videos.

Would backing up the discs help? Any other suggestions?

Thx,

Starkey

EDIT: Maybe this should have been posted in Tech Support... oh, well, I´ll just wait for TC to zap us there.
 
I dont know what to do with CDs - but leaving books on a windowsil in direct sunlight tends to kill mold. (It also yellows the book the more direct sunlight it gets)
 
I wonder if I back up the CDs I´ll have the videos running well again... I will give it a test try on WCP CD 2, the worst case. Maybe if the files are somewhat intact they will be read fine on another CD.
 
How hard would it be to replace them where you are?
 
Sounds like you may end up having to buy new ones. You should definitely try backing them up first to see if that works. Not much you can do for a CD that's messed up that badly. Sorry dude.
 
LeHah said:
How hard would it be to replace them where you are?
Click to expand...

I don´t personally know anyone who has them. Also I´m pretty sure I am the only one in my state registered in these forums.

I´ll just try backing them up. If it does not work, maybe I can get replacement disks with Eder, Delance or anyone in the Brazilian WC community.

Finally, do CDs deteriorate with age or can a CD be kept functional for decades if well-stored?
 
Starkey said:
Finally, do CDs deteriorate with age or can a CD be kept functional for decades if well-stored?
Click to expand...

my wc2 deluxe cd that I bought ten years ago still works fine, although it is scratched to hell. some other cds that I bought in 93-94 that I still have work fine, although they are outdated and the games run way too fast on my somewhat modern computer. BTW the plural of fungus is fungii.
 
Starkey said:
In any case, little black lines - as if the CDs have been scratched internally - are showing up in small parts of some WC4 CDs. Also, my #1 and #2 WCP CDs have little *holes* on them, so that you can see through those tiny holes.
Click to expand...

About 4 months ago I read an article in USA Today about that happening, only it was to music CDs. They interviewed a guy who had amassed a huge CD collection that he had protected and stored with the utmost care. One day he decided to listen to some certain CDs and he found the damage. He went on to discover that approximately 10% of his collection had started to deteriorate, mostly his older CDs. They had the same damage you described, and on many of them a honeycomb-looking "holing" had taken place in several areas. USA Today printed several pictures along with an explanation: A CD manufacturer claimed the cause to be the deterioration of the aluminum layer inside of the CD. According to their expert there could have been a problem during the manufacturing process, but there was little anyone could do about it. He claimed that newer CDs are generally of better quality but of course he offered no guarantees. The advice was to always store your collection wisley, but he cautioned that some things are beyond your control.

Sorry, man- that really sucks. :(
 
It appears a lot of wc cds are being eaten or damaged lately! With me its my cd-rom driver wich isnt working well for some time...but my cds are all right...hopefully! :rolleyes:
 
Starkey,
this kind of fungal infection of CDs is a lot more common in Brazil than in the northern countries, due to the humidity and such.

I have some audio cds with this kind of damage, but never saw that on CD-ROMs.

Maybe myself or delance coulde help you, is your WCP the brazillian edition?
 
Edfilho said:
Starkey,
Maybe myself or delance coulde help you, is your WCP the brazillian edition?
Click to expand...

Thanks a lot, but all my games are in the American version. I don´t know if an American WCP would work with a Brazilian CD #2, though it would be nice to have Portuguese subtitles appearing suddenly in the middle of the game :D

In any case, I´ll try copying them to fresh CD-Rs and then, if it doesn´t work, I´ll ask you for help.

BigsWickDagger said:
They had the same damage you described, and on many of them a honeycomb-looking "holing" had taken place in several areas.
Click to expand...
The damage looks exactly like that, specially in WCP.
 
No, I don´t let my dogs (a Labrador Retriever and a German Shepherd :D), coffee or my 3 year-old nephew get within 30 feet of my WC games.

I can´t prevent the funguses from doing so, though... :(
 
I've been meaning to ask you about your coffee there. Are you just getting it locally, straight from the plant. I know they grow a lot of coffee there and you must have it pretty sweet. The fungus sounds like a small price to pay.
 
I don´t see the relation with the fungus on my CDs and the coffee topic drift.

Anyway, yeah, we do have lots of coffee here. Brazil has the world´s largest coffee crops and my state is #1 in coffee production in Brazil. I do get coffee straight from the plant. But that´s just me here, everyone else buys coffee in the supermarket :p

The thing is that we have a very big yard and my dad has this hobby of planting all kinds of trees, so in my house we have oranges, lemons, papayas, blackberrys, bananas, other types of native fruits I don´t know the respective English name, and coffee, about 100 coffee trees. So dad bought all the coffee processing machinery, he has a coffee smacker, a place to dry them up, a small rotating oven to burn the coffee, and a coffee mower.

And please learn something: real coffee is black and strong, not that Starbucks piss.
 
Starkey,
The local versions of WC games are usually simply the american disks with box, labels and manuals in portuguese... But the game is precisely the same thing! maybe they use the european versions, sometimes, but my guess is that WCP is the US one. It even came with the gorgeous map (well) translated to portuguese.

I'm sure the BR disk 2 will work perfectly well with the american disks, but you should try copying yours first anyway. I recommend you make an image of the disk with Alcohol 120% (the program) in your HD and then burning to the CD-R. On-the-fly copying will probably get FUBARed.

The best grains of brazillian coffee are all exported, unfortunatelly we get the not-so-good ones and the best are turned into piss by the gringos. BTW, even though Colombia has the best Coffee marketing and advertising, ours is considered to be the best.

Back in the coffee cycle in the 1800's, Rio de Janeiro state was basically a huge coffee plantation... nowadays there isn't much coffee around here.

Now that's a freaking huge yard you have there, Starkey, lucky guy. All I ever had were some ferns close to the windows, in the 5th floor apartment I grew up.
 
Is that Alcohol 120% freeware?

And yep, it´s a pretty big yard (5000m2). It used to be considered very far from the city when we bought it, so it was a fairly cheap buy (US$ 15k). The city grew towards us and it is now worth 5 times the original price, and it´s only a 20 minutes drive from downtown BH.
 
Actually, Alcohol 120% is just a demo (try-before-you-buy type thing). It only makes 1 copy of something. I highly recommend it though.
 
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