You will need WinRAR Archiver and Daemon Tools installed to install most games. I prefer Daemon Tools because it's popular and always evolving. It also supports 64bit Vista.
1. Before we do anything with the game files we need to make sure our system will show all file extensions. All windows operating systems do not show file extensions by default, unless you change these settings manually. Go to > Control Panel > Folder Options. And make sure these options are the same as in the following image.
2. Now let’s get on with unpacking those game files we downloaded. Open up the file directory to your downloaded game files. You probably have a bunch of files with the .rar file extension (depends who uploaded it) "Right-click" any file and select “Extract to …”
3. Now in this case with Crysis, after you extracted the files to a folder , what you find in that folder is another 65 files with different file extensions e.g .001 to .065. WinRar will open most file archive extensions automatically but sometimes it needs to be finessed into opening others. This is the case with the Razor1911 files for Crysis (and for many other games). The game file extensions are .001 to .065 Technically that’s 65 different file extensions. We are only interested in one…it could be any one… but we will use .001…. “Right-Click” the .001 file and select “Open”
You will get the following window; make sure you “select a program from a list of installed programs.”
The following window should appear (may vary in XP)
Select WinRar and check the bottom left box so it will always open a .001 file extension….then click “OK”
You should now have WinRar open up. Inside is the “image” file of the game... in this case it’s an iso image file ….it is the culmination of all 65 files that had been split…and downloaded by you. WinRAR is putting them all back together ready for extraction.
Select the file and click the “Extract to” button. Extract the file to a folder on your computer.
Convoluted huh?
4. In your folder containing all the files you extracted...look for a readme or .nfo file.
A quick way to read a .nfo file is to "right-click" the nfo file and choose "open with">notepad
Read what the release/crack/group has to say, especially about installation and cracking, and look for a Serial or Key in the text that you may need during installation.
5. In most cases a game is released as an image file format that needs to be "mounted" by a "virtual drive" program. There are many different file extensions for “images”, these can be .iso, .bin, .ccd, .img, .mds, mdf. A virtual drive mounts the image file emulating a CD/DVD-ROM drive and will usually auto-play the install setup of the game once you mount it.
In this case we are using Daemon tools. Once Daemon tools is installed (may require a reboot), you should see another drive letter in your system and a red icon in your system tray. (bottom right).
Right-click the Daemon Tools icon in your system tray and select >Emulation>All Emulations On....the icon should now be green. Emulation tricks many games into thinking there is a real CD/DVD in the drive so therefore eliminating the need for a cracked .exe (unfortunately the game emulation will not work for Crysis in the current version of Daemon Tools at the time of writing this, not to worry though we have another way around this later on in the tutorial.)
We are now ready to “mount” the image file. Right-click the Daemon Tools icon again. Got to >Virtual CD/DVD-ROM>Device 0>Mount Image…and navigate to …and select your saved (extracted) image file e.g rzr-crys.iso
The auto-play should kick-in and the setup or explore directory window should appear. If it doesn't, navigate to the virtual drive letter (through "My Computer") and open up the directory and find something like a setup.exe and initiate the setup from there.
6. Usually a game requires a key, so have that ready. Sometimes a release group like Razor 1911 will provide a Key Generator ….run that before setup and have it ready. It will sometimes require a cracked .exe that needs to be copied over the installed exe. Sometimes a game will require that you have the CD/DVD loaded to play. In this case the Key Generator and the cracked “Crysis.exe” are in the image file you just mounted. Open up ‘My Computer” and navigate to the Virtual DVD drive that Daemon Tools created and open up the directory….you should see something like this (next image)in the main directory…a lot of the time it is in a folder called “crack” …in this case it’s called Razor911 and they supplied a Key Generator and a cracked “Crysis.exe”
7. What’s a Cracked EXE you may be asking? A cracked exe is a hacked game executable file that replaces the original so that the game can be played without a CD/DVD in the drive. Copy the cracked.exe to the installation directory of your game and overwrite the original (backup the original first, I’ll tell you why at the end of the tutorial.) If you can’t remember where the game is installed try this trick…go to the desktop shortcut to the game and "right-click" it and select > Properties>Shortcut>Open File Location. That will take you to the location of the .exe file.
8. You should be good to go. Remember that most 'Multiplayer" games that are hosted on public servers require that you have a registered online account that is associated with a legit Key e.g. GameSpy for BF2. These are harder to by-pass as they are not recorded on the client side (you.)
9. Mini-Image Files
The following is some optional workarounds for mounting an image so that you don’t need to use a cracked .exe. Also remember that burning the image to a DVD disk will not by-pass the CD/DVD check...it maybe fine for installing the game (slower) but it will not replace a retail DVD disk.
If you backed-up your original exe after using the cracked version. You can now use the original if you follow the rest of this tutorial.
This is useful if you don’t want to keep a 6GB image file on your hard drive . And/or you want to be able to update the game without having to find an updated cracked.exe every time there is a legit game patch released. (a game patch replaces the cracked.exe with the official patched version)
Go to GameCopyWorld this site has all the released cracked .exe’s to most games. They also have Trainers and Mini-Image files. Mini-Image files are just like the one you downloaded to install the game…but they are only a few Mb’s in size. They have only the relevant files in the image that are required by the “CD/DVD check” program built into the original .exe
In the case of Crysis …GameCopyWorld has a small image file and a small program called YASU (developed by Daemon Tools) Download them both.
10. Mount the image the same way you did the large image. The Crysis Mini-Image file is two files...a .mdf and a .mds ....mount the .mds file. Copy the YASU.exe to where you installed Daemon Tools…run YASU.EXE.
You should now be able to run Crysis without using a cracked exe (you'll also need a very expensive gaming rig to run it!)…and if you have a legit key like I do…you should be able to play multiplayer on a public server without getting kicked by Punkbuster (anti-cheat service built into a lot of games)
I hope this covers the basics in what you need to install a cracked game (or some other programs)…remember there are slightly different ways to by-pass copy protection. These are explained on the .NFO files that accompany the game or program files you download…good luck continue...
