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EA STORE GUIDE

As RA3: Uprising is only available via download, I thought it prudent to consolidate some information I have gathered over the years about the EA Store, the EA Download Manager (EADM) and Digital Rights Management (DRM) and how they all affect C&C titles.

1 YEAR RE-DOWNLOAD

Unlike other game download sites, the EA Store only lets you re-download your games for 1 year as standard. This means that if you buy a new computer in 2 years time and want to re-download your game, you cannot. You can extend this time limit to 5 years by purchasing "Extended Download Service". However you can backup the game to a DVD, instructions can be found below.
Source: EA Store

LIFETIME DOWNLOAD LIMIT

There is a limit on the number of times that you can download the game during its lifetime. The figure is not documented, but reports put it at around the 5 downloads mark. Every time you click the download button in EADM will increase your download count by 1. Also if you have installed on more than three computers within a ten day period, you will need to wait until the first installation expires.
Source: EA Support

ACTIVATION LIMIT (DRM)

Red Alert 3 and Uprising both use the online activation based authentication system (whereas previous games used disk-based). You can install the game on 5 different computers, if you wish to install it on a 6th, you must first deauthorise one computer using the deauthorisation tool in the settings menu.

You can install/uninstall the game unlimited times on an activated computer. Reinstalling Windows or making a major hardware change will count as an authorisation.

You can deauthorise your computer at any time via the Red Alert 3 or Uprising options menu, you should always deauthorise before uninstalling. If you have already uninstalled without de-authing, you can use the tools from the EA Game Authorization Management website.
If you use up your 5 authorisations and are unable to use the de-authorisation options, then you must contact EA Customer Support to request more authorisations.

BACKING UP TO DVD

I strongly recommend that you backup your game to a DVD. That way if you need to install the game again in several years time, you have a hard copy which will work long after the re-download period has elapsed. The process is explained in detail below:

  • Navigate to: C:\ProgramData\Electronic Arts\EADM\cache\{ *NUMBERS* }\cnc_ra3uprising_eu1.zip
  • In your cache directory, there will be a folder with some numbers, this contains the contents of the game's DVD (as if you had bought a physical copy). Do not disclose these numbers to anyone, they are sensitive. In my case the uprising folder is suffixed with eu1, this may differ depending on your region.

    XP users - You will now need to use your DVD burning software (such as Nero or Cyberlink) as XP does not have built in support for this.

    Selecting the Uprising files to burn in Cyberlink

    Vista users - Select the entire contents of the directory and click the Burn button, this will prepare your files for writing to a DVD.

    Click Burn

    N.B. C&C games are too large to fit onto a standard DVD so you will need to use a Dual-Layered DVD.

    The game will then burn to the DVD and you will be able to use it to re-install your game in future! If you wish you can now delete these 'temporary files' from your PC to free up 5.5GB of disk space. All you have to do is click the red X on the right hand side of the game title in the EADM.

    Remove Temporary Files

    REINSTALLING FROM DVD

    Reinstalling from the DVD isn't quite as straight forward as simply running the installer from the CD. That will ask you for a CD key, which you don't get with the EADM!

    Copy the contents of the DVD to:

  • C:\ProgramData\Electronic Arts\EADM\cache\{ *NUMBERS* }\cnc_ra3uprising_eu1.zip
  • In my case the uprising folder is suffixed with eu1, this may differ depending on your region.

    Now open the EADM and you will see the light blue install button, click it to re-install the game.
    ??????
    Profit!

    And that�s all there is to it! If you encounter any problems feel free to ask on our forums. When you post, please describe any error messages (screenshots are best) and which of our guides or other troubleshooting steps you have used.

     

     

     



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