It is vital to note that you must first have the game installed and updated to the correct official patch version——for almost any crack to function correctly. Using a crack intended for a different version will cause the game to crash. Here are the common steps people follow:

Developers (and later, modders) reverse-engineer this .exe to change the instruction to: "Ignore the disc drive. Assume the files are local."

While no-CD cracks may seem like an attractive solution, there are alternative options available for gamers:

If you apply the crack and the game still crashes at launch, you are likely encountering the bug or the Options.ini error.