Whenever I start up "the_sims" as a regular user, I get this error after putting in my cd-key.

The authenticity of The Sims cdrom cannot be verified.
The installation cannot complete.

It also said, it couldn't varify the cdrom in the terminal, but thats when I install it, or when it wants to show it. I can still play the game no problem in root. But I'd like my family, and friends to stay away from my user name. (I'd like them to not feel like needing to crack my password, I got a good one, but eventualy they figure out by looking over my shoulder.)

You could configure/use sudo for this?

how?

Sudo is a useful program, and it's configured by using the "visudo" command (look at "man visudo" and "man vi" as well), but this sounds to me like it's a cd permissions problem. Post your /etc/fstab contents and the output of "ls -o /dev/cdrom"

ls -o /dev/cdrom
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root 3 2004-11-02 10:58 /dev/cdrom -> hdd

And...

/etc/fstab

/dev/hda1 / reiserfs defaults 1 1
/dev/hdb1 /home reiserfs defaults 1 2
/dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom iso9660 noauto,user,ro 0 0
/dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy auto noauto,owner 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0