Quest for Glory 5 rare glitch

[zzajlatem]

Hello,
I'm playing the Quest for Glory series (as is everyone here I would guess) and have come upon a frustrating glitch in the 5th game.
My computer is running Windows XP and I am playing a pirated version of this game because my CD drive stopped working. I have pictures of myself with the original discs that I will put at the bottom of this post. All of the patches that I have found have been applied including the experimental installation icon. I have also posted this same question in the QFMG forum.
My unique glitch happens in the fishing villages during the first rite. If I click on a mercenary that just came out of a door, the game freezes. The same can be said for mercenaries on the upstairs level. When I enter a building, the same thing happens when I click on the mercenaries immediately after I walk in the door. At this point, I can alt-tab out and see (in task manager) that the game is "not responding". I can then close it with task manager.
I would really like to finish the series. Please help. Here are the pictures:

[Collector]

There is only one official patch to be applied for QfG5, QFG5UP12, which includes all earlier fixes. There is also an unofficial fan made patch to help it run on 2000 and later Windows, QFG5WIN2K. Most of the issues with this game center around QuickTime versions. Initially, these were fixed by upgrading to newer versions of QuickTime, but with later versions the APIs changed enough that newer version made more problems that they solved. My new QfG5 installer is designed to address these issues. It applies the QFG5UP12 and QFG5WIN2K patches and it sets the game up to use the version of QuickTime that the game was designed for without need to downgrade the version installed on the system. Additionally, it installs the entire game to the hard drive for CD-less play.

That said, I have never heard of your particular issue. I can't say if it is caused by your pirated version or not. It could be that it has a corrupted file that the game cannot read or it may have been altered in some unforeseen way. Often I have found that people having problems with old games have pirated version that have been ripped, crack or modified in someway that causes glitches that do not occur with the official version. More than the legal issues, this is the main reason that I don't give support for pirated versions, whether "abandonware" or not. I would suggest that you try to get a cheap outboard DVD drive and use your official discs to reinstall the game. Short of that, if you could borrow someone else's external and used the installer from here, you would not need to have the drive to play.

[zzajlatem]

Thank you for answering so quickly. Could you please post a link to your file so that I can try it?
What you say about the pirated version being flawed in some unseen way is probably true, since nobody has ever heard of this glitch before. Since the game is packaged with quicktime 3 and I have quicktime 12 installed, that sounds like a valid point as well. I wouldn't be against downgrading my quicktime player at all, since this is the only thing that I use it for.
As with the previous four games, I'm going to be tinkering and fiddling with it until I get it to function correctly. This part becomes the real challenge and playing the game is usually easy in comparison. I'm sure you know all too well the problems that the fourth game has. It seemed like I needed a thieves' toolkit mark II to make it work.

[Collector]

There are installers for all of the games

http://sierrahelp.com/Patches-Updates/N ... ers.html#Q

[zzajlatem]

Already tried it. Like I said in my original post, I've tried everything I could find.
I'll try messing with the CD drive to see if I can make your installer work once and not have to use the discs or the drive ever again.

[zzajlatem]

OK,
I got my drive to work and used your installer with the real discs. This is the one that lets me play without the CD, right? I can't seem to find the instructions on how to do this. I have a virtual CD utility (Daemon tools lite) that I can use to make a virtual CD of the files that I need. If this is the case, let me know what files to throw on there and I'll be all set. If not, could you please make the instructions available?

[zzajlatem]

Here's what I did:

Installed Quest for Glory 5 with the discs using the installer that you referenced

the regular up12 patch would not run (not a valid previous version)

patched the game with the win2k patch and the qfgup12_64 patch (not sure if this is the right one for my machine)

made a virtual image of the game CD with Daemon tools lite

went back to the game and tried to free a fishing village using my previous save

I was killing mercenaries left and right. Then one came out of a door and I tried to kill him. Bad mistake, the game froze.
Let me know if any of my steps are not a good idea so I can do the right things. I'm sure that the Quest for Glory community will be interested if we can figure out what's going on here.

[Collector]

Don't patch any games installed with the installers here. They already include all relevant patches. If you managed to get your drive to work, just place disc 1 in the drive and run the installer. Change discs when prompted. There is very little that is on the discs that is not required, so you need just about all of the files.

Remember that saves made with a game bug can carry over the bug when used with a copy that does not have the bug. Try an earlier save.