SimCity 4 Deluxe Box - Insert Play Disc and Restart Game

Hey everyone.

This one has me frustrated.

I bought a new retail version of SimCity 4 Deluxe Box Set and installed it. ( Don't judge!! I like the city building games!! )

Anyways.. It wont fire up after the install. I will give me a picture of a suspension bridge and a window with the text "Cannot locate the simCity 4 deluxe play disk, please insert the simCity 4 deluxe play disk, select OK and restart the game"

I've tried running it in compatibility mode, Run as administrator, starting the game from the CD's autorun screen, starting the game from the start menu, starting it, letting the error happen, and then inserting disc 2 into the tray and restarting, starting it with disc 1 and starting it with disc 2.

Anyone else have this problem with the game?

I take it everyone is drawing a blank....

I'm trying to run a clean boot on it and see if there's something interfering with the program.

Here's a picture of the error I get.

Just bought the game today, I'm running XP and having the same issue. Typically a box set like this comes with a play disk that actually says "Play Disk". Software issue or did a batch of game sets go out with no play disks in them?

I've been on EA's customer support chat twice now. The first time I was told that I needed to set the affinity for the game's EXE in the task manager. The guy hung up on me before I realized that I can't even get the game to RUN to set the affinity.

The second time I was asked to try clean booting before running the program. That didn't work either.

I'm on try number 3 with EA's tech support.

It shouldn't matter, but I wonder if you have to install societies and snap city before sim city will run? I installed snap, and am currently installing societies but its taking forever which is irritating when all I bought that box set for was sim city 4/rush hour.

The first go around with the installation, I had the whole package installed. No dice.

EA tech support gave up. They are now telling me that the disc is corrupt and I now have to navigate the return policy.

S.U.C.K.

Balls, I've been looking through other forums, even reviews on Amazon and a decent amount of people seem to have had the same issue with this box set, but I'm not getting anything in the way of solutions. I only bought the box set because thats all they had at best buy, if I cant get it working I guess I'll just return it and buy sim city4/rush hour combo online, there doesnt seem to be as many issues with that one other than to not buy the download version.

Yeah, EA is no Blizzard thats for sure.

Good luck to you. I've got to go dig the box and receipt out of the trash and hope EA actually follows through...

All I wanted was a few hours of city tweaking!!