Omen believes in rubbing a banana on disks clears up any scratches.  Swears by it.

I've also heard of peanut butter being used (smooth not crunchy!), but I think some of those methods work by merely filling in the scratch so the laser is less likely to 'bounce' and scatter from the data.

Omen believes in rubbing a banana on disks clears up any scratches.  Swears by it.

It's true!  I've fixed my BF1942 disc that way.

Here's a video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pghtMY7IlDg

First, lets make sure the disk can be recovered. Hold it up toa bright light with the label towards you. If you can see light coming through any area that is normally covered in silver on the data side then the disk is beyond repair. You could try putting a couple layers of masking tape over it and may get lucky...but ultimately you need to replace it. If you cant see any light through the data layers then move on to the next steps.

Ok, if you've recently reinstalled vista, make sure all drivers are up to date. motherboard, CD drive, everything. If you are competent enough youmay even want to try seeing if you can flash your disk drive with an up to date firmware update.

Now try again.

The bad news however is your 'weird' scratch. A disk can generally run fine if its scratched provided that the scratch runs from the centre to the edge of the disk and not across it. Since the data is stored in rings around the disk, any scratch which runs along the data lines will render it useless.

You can try to repair it yourself, but I suggest practicing on a non valuable disk first and taking your time. Take a blank cd and burn some data to it. Music, pictures, whatever but remember the smaller the data the less chance there is of getting an individual file error. Burning a large program (first strike for example) may be better.

Now scratch the burnt area in a similar manner and depth to your game cd. Try to read the disk, does it work or do you still get errors? If you get errors great! Move to the next step. If not, try scratching it again.

Ok, now you have another unreadable disk its time to try repairing it. You need an abrasive material and unbelievably, toothpaste works great. It MUST be toothpaste though, not a gel, just plain white toothpaste. If it has baking soda in it then its also good to use, but avoid anything with colours, stripes etc.

Apply a small amount of toothpaste to the disk (pea sized amount) and using a soft dry cloth gently rub the disk around the area of the scratch. When rubbing the scratch out only rub from the centre to the edge of the disk in straight lines. This is beacuse the toothpsate is an abrasive so you want to avoid damaging the disk further by introducing more scratches along the data lines. Rub the disk like this around the scratch for about 15 minutes. Carefully rinse all the toothpaste off using warm water, then dry it with a soft cloth and leave for an hour or so to ensure all water is gone. Check the disk. Does the scratch look better? If so try reading it again, if you still get errors then give it another 15 minutes of polishing.

The key to polishing out a scratch is using gentle but firm motions, straight lines from centre to the edge (never ever clean or polish a disk by wiping it in circles) and being patient.

If you do not want to try any of these then the only other option left is buying a new disk or digital copy from the EA store. At uk prices, 2142 is currently £10 (about $15). You could try contacting EA customer services, they will replace disks but it will cost £7.99 to replace it (about $10 dollars give or take). Given that its an old game and often in the bargain section of stores, you may as well just go buy one.

Ok ok, seriously. Go to control panel and security settings, you need to turn off user account control. Restart.

Check to make sure NO bf2142 files have managed to install themselves, go to program files Electronic Arts and make sure there is no entry for 2142. If there is, remove it.

Insert the 2142 cd (and make sure it is clean! A dirty, scratched or worse, cracked disk will throw up all sorts of errors.), it should autorun and bring up the usual install menu. If it doesnt then explore the disk and double click autoplay. It should then bring up the menu, install should then hopefully progress as normal but you may get a compatability error, just click ok to run in compatability mode OR, when you explore the disk rightclick on autorun and select run in compatability mode for win xp sp2.

Try restarting your PC, or trying again in a few days.  If all else fails, use a torrent to download a virtual image of the disc (You have a legit copy infront of you, the image is essentially for "backup" purposes making downloading it shifty, but not illegal), mount it to a virtual drive and install it from there.

Or, just try running setup.exe in WinXP mode.  That probably won't work though.

Any ideas?

Raedeon HD 5770
Vista 32 Home Premium
3 GBs RAM