I did some more testing today and took the router/firewall out of the equation by connecting directly to the modem for a few minutes, the same error happened, so it shouldn't be a firewall issue.
I just bought the ultimate collection on origin for 5 euros instead and now it works fine, so it seems the no-cd patch I used didn't play well with it.
Now I can get rid of the CDs at least and not worry about them anymore.
thanks for the help