(Or how to Install GTA IV PC if you’re getting CRC errors).
We’ve come a long way since you used to have to have a PC to play the best games. Granted a £2000 PC with a £400 screen will still out perform any console out there but these days you get to play most of the big releases on the consoles as well and increasingly you’ll get to play them there first.
The “burden of screwing around” however on PC is now beyond a joke. It took the best part of an entire afternoon to install GTAIV PC from the two DVDs it comes on because of repeated CRC errors stopping the install progressing. After trying everything to correct these I dropped to Windows safe mode and the thing installed without any errors. I can thus only assume that the copy protection that comes with the game was interfering with something already installed on my machine. A quick search reveals that I’m not the only one and other people out there are getting replacement DVDs and in some cases hard disks (both of which can legitimately cause CRC errors if they’re failing). Uninstalling your CD burning programs (Nero, DirectCD etc) should NOT be a requirement simply to bypass an issue with over zealous copy protection.
It’s been said in forums a million times over but you’re now better off illegally downloading your PC games, with the copy protection hacked out than you are going to a shop and making a legitimate purchase. For years now I’ve tried to convince people that you’re better off buying the games you like, so that more like it are made in future, but I really don’t believe my own words anymore.
If the PC does dramatically decrease in market share games wise, this will be a pity, because the PC will nearly always be the most technologically advanced platform for developers to play on and they deserve the budgets to match.
From a consumer perspective however, that PS3 is looking vastly tempting…
