Hi, I just got my Alienware m11x (it's a really decent gaming laptop, I'm loving it so far ), and I wanted to play FO3 on it. One of the drawbacks of my machine is that it does not have a CD drive, so I made an iso of my disk and installed it using clonedrive. I knew that the launcher is SecuROM protected, so I ran setup.exe and it installed ok. However, after installing, when I run fallout3.exe, it gives me this SecuROM error, "No Disc inserted. Please insert the original 'Fallout 3' CD/DVD."

I've tried doing a lot of things to get this game to run like running the .exe when the iso is not mounted, sharing my Desktop cd drive and installing it through that, removing SecuROM (following the tutorial from the reclaim your game site), and patching it to 1.7. None of these things worked.

I thought that the fallout3.exe was not SecuROM protected. I just want to play the game I legally bought. I had the same problem with Borderlands (I had to cave in and use a no CD hack). I shouldn't have to jump through all these hoops to play my game.

Anyone have a way to get this game to run without a CD drive? I don't want to resort to using a NO CD hack (I shouldn't have to since fallout3.exe should be SecuROM free), and I don't want to buy an external CD drive.

Thank you for your time.
Oh, I forgot to mention, but this is the original Disk, not the GOTY edition.

Sorry, no dice. You must have a physical drive to install. These forums will not provide assistance with installing from a virtual disk image, because even though your intention is honest, this is a common vehicle for piracy.