Am still playing catch-up, but will be happy to help; where are you stuck?
As for a virtual disk, I assume you're talking about the kind that lets you play games without having them in your CD drive à la Virtual DAEMON? First, you have to rip the CD to create a disc image; I use Roxio and save it as an *.iso or *.cue/*.bin. Older CDs without copyright protection (including the Thief CDs) shouldn't give you any trouble, but you might need a special ripper for newer game discs. I'm sure there are free ones available, but I've never looked. (Try here (http://www.download.com/windows/) to get started.)
Once you've ripped your CD, install your virtual mounter program. With Virtual DAEMON, the most important setting is how many virtual drives you want to create (between one and four). Virtual DAEMON saves this number and automatically creates these virtual drives upon startup. Once you've got your virtual drives set up, simply mount the disc image of the game you want to play and voilà!
The most common difficulty I've found is trying to play games off of virtual drives that were installed through the computer's CD drive. Most games write commands during install that tell the program to always look at the same drive for the CD information. When you switch drives, you have to re-write those commands to match the new drive. For example, I installed Bloodlines through my CD/DVD drive, which on my computer is D:. I mount my Bloodlines virtual CD on my third virtual drive, which is G:. Thus, before I could play Bloodlines, I had to go into the setup logs (I can't remember the exact file name right now, but I'm sure I can find it) and switch the drive name. I can tell you exactly what files you need to alter for virtual drives with Bloodlines, Thief, and Deus Ex, but I'd be guessing beyond that.
Hopefully that's not too confusing. I can give more detailed instructions if you want.
There are some people who question the use of virtual drives for game playing since it's possible to just download a disc image online and play the game for free, but since I bought all of the games I use it with and it does improve game performance, I don't have any qualms.
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As for a virtual disk, I assume you're talking about the kind that lets you play games without having them in your CD drive à la Virtual DAEMON? First, you have to rip the CD to create a disc image; I use Roxio and save it as an *.iso or *.cue/*.bin. Older CDs without copyright protection (including the Thief CDs) shouldn't give you any trouble, but you might need a special ripper for newer game discs. I'm sure there are free ones available, but I've never looked. (Try here (http://www.download.com/windows/) to get started.)
Once you've ripped your CD, install your virtual mounter program. With Virtual DAEMON, the most important setting is how many virtual drives you want to create (between one and four). Virtual DAEMON saves this number and automatically creates these virtual drives upon startup. Once you've got your virtual drives set up, simply mount the disc image of the game you want to play and voilà!
The most common difficulty I've found is trying to play games off of virtual drives that were installed through the computer's CD drive. Most games write commands during install that tell the program to always look at the same drive for the CD information. When you switch drives, you have to re-write those commands to match the new drive. For example, I installed Bloodlines through my CD/DVD drive, which on my computer is D:. I mount my Bloodlines virtual CD on my third virtual drive, which is G:. Thus, before I could play Bloodlines, I had to go into the setup logs (I can't remember the exact file name right now, but I'm sure I can find it) and switch the drive name. I can tell you exactly what files you need to alter for virtual drives with Bloodlines, Thief, and Deus Ex, but I'd be guessing beyond that.
Hopefully that's not too confusing. I can give more detailed instructions if you want.
There are some people who question the use of virtual drives for game playing since it's possible to just download a disc image online and play the game for free, but since I bought all of the games I use it with and it does improve game performance, I don't have any qualms.