I get the general idea to create ISOs of the disks and mount them, but is there a step-by-step guide posted somewhere. My searches have come up with fragments of the process, but I was hoping it was written down somewhere.

I think I have it now....we will see.

For the next person who might ask.

Go to
Positive G's Longbow 2 install guide
http://www.speichts.com/games/lb2/

follow the directions in the preamble about NO-CD Installs.

In a nutshell you create the ISOs then you mount them. Be sure to name your ISOs the same name of the real Longbow disks.

Well I thought I had it figured out. I have the ISO mounted, and it let me do a single mission, but when I went to a campaign it asked for a disk.

What is odd is once it did that even having the original disk in does not work. It requires a reboot, so I am guessing it is a Vista issue.

Any ideas?

Hmm, you should have both ISO's mounted, disk 1 and disk 2, what tool are you using? Daemon tools?

+G is correct. The campaign takes place in the Azerbaijan region. CD1 only has the NTC area maps. It needs the second CD to decompress the AZR maps. I generally keep one CD mounted and if I want to switch theaters, I mount the other one. Either CD will allow the game to work.

Recluse

I am using Daemon Tools Lite, and I just found out how to mount 2 drives. i will give that a try.

Something more is going on. I can do a single mission with the original disk in, exit to desktop. Remove the disk and mount an image and try to start the game and I get the "No CD" message. Then immediately put in the original CD and it will still give me the "No CD" message. The only fix is to copy my whole backup (thanks for that tip) Longbow folder to the Janes/Longbow folder. It is like some flag gets set after trying the mounted drive and it will not go back to the original CD.

The good news is I can play the game with the CDs and I can poke around with the ISOs in my spare time. Thanks for all the help.

Have you looked at mine and Shadow's guide?
http://www.helosim.com/flyboy/lb2/inst_lb2_image.html

Also find alternative install methods here:
http://www.helosim.com/flyboy/lb2/install.html

Murphy's Law strikes!! It appears my CD/DVD drive is bad. It will not recognize any disk of any kind, now. A new one is on the way and I hope it was the root of my problems.
Thanks for the assistance. I will report back when I get the new drive.

This could just be superstition, and I do not know what level drivers Daemon installs, but I and many others have reported drives going dead after using Daemon tools (or at least, the SPTD driver that comes along with it). How long after installing Daemon did your drive stop working?

It might be this issue you're running into (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314060), that Daemons really does FUBAR drives, or pure dumb luck.

Most people never seem to have problems with it though.

Nasty, I've been using Alcohol 120% instead of Daemon tools (well I should say I did use Alcohol 120%, I had to uninstall it to allow Fallout3 to run).

I've had D-tools installed for the past 7-8 years. Never had a single issue with it. I also had no issues installing or running Fallout3. I just closed D-tools but I didnt uninstall it.

Good to hear. With Alcohol, the F3 launcher detected it, and wouldn't load. You can bypass that issue using just the program EXE I hear.

Isn't there a method to decompress all of the map files onto the HD so you do not need the CDs at all?

Yes, but you need to flip between compresses based on the map sets. It wasn't practical, manual if anything. The ISO method seems to work best, given todays drive speeds and capacities (can't wait for SSHDs to become cheap).

Concur! For many years I used Hatchet's Longbow Toolshop to swap in pre-decompressed maps and it worked very well. Caveat was, you had to know which map you were flying before starting the game or you could screw up your folder structure with an on the fly decompression.

In order to use some of Hatchet's experimental terrains (Kossovo, Bosnia) it was required to use this method as the terrains had to be combined with some of the pre-decompressed LB2 terrains to work and could NOT be directly used if decompressing terrains on the fly.

There was also a NOCD .exe which also required copying of the decompressed files to the HD where they would be decompressed as usual, but from the HD. THis worked and was fast

With mounted .iso files, the decompression is similarly incredibly fast, satisfies the CD check and I now prefer that method. The advantage over the NOCD method,other than not relying on a hacked .exe, is that you can locate the .iso files ANYWHERE (e.g. on an external or network drive) but I pretty much keep them on my main drive so there is no real disk space savings over the NOCD method.

Recluse

Agreeing with Recluse about ISO use, and adding that using the ISO method co-op multiplay has not appeared to be hindered when changing and decompressing new maps.

I have to admit the timing was "about the same time," but I did not get the same messages. My problem was not that I lost access to the drive. I could still see the drive, but is kept asking for a disk. When put a disk in it would not recognize the disk. I have a new PC now (employer replacement), so we will see what happens.

You do still get asked for a CD sometimes when using ISO/Daemons method, but all you have to do (in my case anyhow) is click Cancel or OK or whatever and it will continue to load the game. You may get the message a few times, but clicking the said buttons will make it carry on.