Hi Skip,
I am not from Laminar Research.
Let me be quite clear. If your disc version is from Steam I cannot offer a solution. Steam is another story and has no affiliation with Laminar Research.
Like you, I only have disc versions from an authorised/official Laminar Research seller.
To successfully run X-Plane 11 you will need to have your disc No 1 in the DVD drive basically while running X-Plane.which is unlike the digital download version which has a product key. There is no product key for the disc version however the seller of my version provided a password printed on the box. It happens to be a guise or sales trick to purchase additional products from them.
One way of preserving your disc No1 from damage I have been advised to create an ISO disc from Disc 1 which is supposedly a specific bootable disc to allow X-Plane to run. I haven't done so as yet. A disc copy of Disc 1 onto another disc does not work due to imbeddd features.
There are earlier postings in this forum on the subject.
Details on how to create an ISO disc can be found on the internet as well.
Hope this helps.
Glenn