Everybody, calm down. In other words - I'm the only one who can save Pigggy now.
BP, there are 3 ways in correcting the sh1t, you are in now:
#1 - Getting a new CD drive.
#2 - Facts below.
#3 - Fly all the way to my place and back with your legit copies of D2 + Exp in images.
Since you're gonna have to use #1 anyhoo, but wanna play D2Exp over the internet now, then you're gonna have to stick with plan #2, cause plan #3 is the most expensive. Here it is (like I said before, duh):
1. You take your CD's (or the expansion CD, since it's the only one you will need) to a friend's house.
2. Make him download a program CloneCD (since it has a trial - no worries or having to go illegal - which I
have already done, for the record
). It's prefectly safe and has no spyware, believe me.
3. After downloading it, make a legit image of your legit CD. To do that, run the clonecd.exe and press "Read to Image". This will do it.
4. Ask your friend to borrow a 1GB USB stick and copy the image into it.
5. Copy the image file onto your PC hard disk and use an image reader like "Daemon Tools v4.03HE" to let you play the game. P.S. Attain this program from the internet, it's free, legal and it holds no spyware.
6. If you still have problems like: getting a black screen with mumbo jumbo saying "blah blah blah 0x00000C or smth", just apply the patch located in your image file. The retail patch makes this work or you can try downloading the v1.11b patch off of the internet. Trust me, this happened to me when I first started D2 and I fixed it by doing this.
7. Play the game.
I hope this cleared all misunderstandings people.
@Scatty, btw - I can be online right now, so just meet me there, man.