Actully you are wrong starforce can mess up a system more then 10 virus's it personally corrupted my whole raid 5 array when sf 3 first came out i had to pay for data recovery (cost a ton) drives / motherboard and cables were fine after i had all my data on dvds from ontrack I decided to give it a go again i setup a temp array with very clean install of windows i installed chipset drivers / video / sound and network (raid drivers were installed on windows install from F6) ... then i installed the accused game that had the starforce protection and had a few debugers running after the drivers were install the data curuption started immediate i had logs and logs of proof turns out i couldn't sue starforce and / or ubisoft i instead had them reproduce the problem and they found out it was there drivers causing the conflict with my raid drivers....anyways i was very pissed and didnt get one penny from them for data recovery when they admited it was their fault and said it would be fixed in a update..

anyways long story short took that pos game back after explaining it to the store they allowed it and i will NEVER buy a starforce protected game ever again.

I think anyone is a fool who allows these companys to take advantage of the customers with this particular protection and by supporting it you will just make it get worse, for example now "root kits" are coming out they install and intercept kernel calls and can hide predefined directorys (full story here http://www.sysinternals.com/blog/200...al-rights.html )

pretty soon there will be tons of these malicious mailware / root kits / drivers / hidden drivers / DRM license keys / that no system will be able to run stable or run the paticular software in the future, take a close look at starforce it blacklists all scsi devices thinking they are emulators (that would include most sata) , in the future cdroms might just be sata and these game wouldnt even work without maybe downloading 100's of megs in patches to maybe get it working (if the company even supports it anymore). and its a dirty protection takes more time getting it to "work" then you can spend enjoying the game you just spent you hard earned money on. email tech support they give you the run around say its starforce contact them or starforce says its ubisofts fault.

It is a virus basically it install drivers (3+) (not to mention it doesn't inform users of installing them yes when you click on the game exe it says protection system but doesnt give you any choice not to install it as soon as the game exe is run they are installed) they run in the backgound regardless of the game being installed or running they can modify packets being written to a cd/dvd recorder if it thinks you'r copying a protected cd (this goes to show the protection goes farther then just the game protection) it can cause numerous of other flaws too like general system instability online reporting (spyware) or data curuption

There is plenty of proof out there that starforce is a shady protection using "holes" in windows and other bugs and can cause numerous security flaws. Good for you if you don't have any problems but when you do with a system upgrade or whatever remember what you posted.

Its gotten so bad im afraid to pre-order a game since i don't know what protection system it will be using :(

Well i got trackmania sunrise to work again by disabling the cdrom drives again with sf nightmare even tho they were already disabled. Weird. But as for splinter cell it still dont work. I might try it on other system that hasnt got alcohol installed & see how it goes. But not today

Sorry DabHand but don't ya think that is "drivers are faulty" and
starforce "causes them to fail", all this could damage your hardware?!? Drivers are made to make hardware work correctly, I don't like the idea of "something" interfering with them. Again, it's neither a single person nor a leader which makes me think that starforce is dangerous; a lot of people exprienced problems after installing sf protected games; only who used warez\cracked version avoided to install starforce on his system; I don't mind if a game is must buy, masterpiece or whatever, I basically want to stay away from probs and keep thinkin' that cutting prices should be the way to go, not causing problem ESPECIALLY to legal copy owners.
Finally, as I don't have money to waste in games which could damage my system, I'd like to know experiences from other users; it's not a mere "follow the leader", it's just trying to get some advice. :o

I myself have a raid system running. And ive been using SF games for quite a while now, once I had a problem with a CD being not recognised, other than that ive had no problem, and that one problem I contacted SF about it and they gave me a fix for it, not a problem.


Infact they will help you, if you ask them nicely, they arent the bad guys, they are trying to make a product that stops piracy and doing a good job at it.


Again they give support, but only to genuine users, on their forum you see countless warez users trying to get support but always fall at the first hurdle when they cant provide a genuine key or system information (always missing the important bits out).


Im not saying all people here are warez users, but most are, there is no doubt in that, and its the warez users who are offcourse finding it hard, so when they seen Grumpy's good thread about it, most of them make up the stories and add to it (again not all of them).


When SF starts it authenicates a disc, and that means benchmarking your drive, if your drive's life is about to give way it could cause the drive to die.

Warez users will have more complications, as that is what the protection is designed for to discourage warez issues.


Im just fed up seeing the same excuse each time "SF did this and that" when it could be the simple fact that drives or hardware were dying or were faulty. So immediately they blame SF. Why not Safedisc why not Securom? They do the same thing now. Each place a system file which resides in the windows folder and keeps watch.


If you got alot of genuine SF users and asked how much problems they had, you would probably find a huge amount of them have had no problems. Like everything nothing is 100% and PC hardware isnt generic like consoles, so there will be cases of incompatibility.

All im saying is, look at other avenues first before taking the easy option of blaming SF.

Its funny though how everyones pc runs fine without starforce installed.
I'm not against cd protection at all but when it goes this far where it can effect the performace and integrity of my pc thats a no-no i dont care if its the best game in the world i still wouldn't buy it or even play the demo.

I am against warez very much so (matter of fact i work for an organization that helps stop it) but i am still for no-cd and backups since thats what the law entitles you to starforce prevents this in turn breaking the law.

I've bought and happily played tons of Sf3 games (toca rd 2, panzers phase 1, both trackmanias, soldiers: howw2, etc, etc, etc...) and i've never EVER had any problems with SF3.

I'm not saying everyone will have problems but some people with untested or more uncommon hardware / software combinations might wreck havok with their protection ..

after my experiance i wouldnt touch it with a ten foot pole since i know what its capable of, many users don't think of the problems until it happens to them slowly & severly (many issues go un-noticed for example a simple application crash might be related and since the driver is hidden its hard to acuse and most average users wouldn't even know it's there) another reason the company can get away with it "how can something that doesn't exsit cause a problem" :)

All im saying is its going to far with these protection ..jailing us treating us like criminals i prefer not to support it. what will be next ask for ssn number / modify mbr / online license aquire (like ms DRM) / dongle / install their own os..etc?

everyone should read that sony rook kit url i posted its really intresting at what schemas they are coming up with
:)

@hyakkii: I'm sorry but even if you have the right to create a backup of your original CD/DVD, the developer/publisher doesn't have to make it easy for you. So, no, Starforce (or any copy protection, for that matter) does not break the law. (No, I don't want to defend Starforce at all...!)

Not unimportant:
http://www2.daemon-tools.cc/dtcc/sho...9&postcount=24

The Law does NOT say you can backup everything when you like..


It says you CAN backup when PERMISSION is given from the author/publisher.


If you backup a game that the publisher did not give consent to, you are then breaking the law.


And it doesnt matter what country your in, its the owners right to allow you to have a backup or not, it is them who say if you can or not, not the government.

HOLY
DT4 is best **** ever
maybe DT4 pro will be better!

looks like SFcure cuz same ****.. disable cd/unplug drivers ect

U.S. Copyright laws allow you to make one backup copy of software you own. However, that backup copy is "tied" to your original. If you sell or give away your original software, you must destroy your backup copy or package it with the orignal when you sell or give it away. Likewise, you may not sell or give away your backup copy without the original.
Of course, with the advent of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), breaking the copyright protection on a piece of software you own has been made a crime in many cases, so if the software you are backing up implements copyright protection, it may also be illegal.

also the law US Code collection :P http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/h...7----000-.html

but again these are us laws im sure it varies greatly country to country

it says no where you need the software creators permission to make a archival backup it might differ if it was in the eula. but almost every game's eula would never hold up in court

So DM4 works whit Splinter Cell Chaos Theory. or what? How to run it?
Did any body try DM4 whit Cossacks 2?? Does it help?

Again, if you dont like the protection well dont buy it, i'm sure they are aware of sf3 driver confliction problems (because that's all it is, driver conflictions, and you said hyakkii, it provably comes down to that, hardware combinations. To be honest i doubt a hell of a lot that they did it on purpose, i mean why would they? I'm also sure that they are working to fix it as obviously they just loose clients like that. And about the what next, i think it should all be internet or phone activation (a free worldwide number of course).

well on my side i still cant run civ4 with my a120% image i stil have to run it with antiblaxx as for scct ill have to buy it back as i sold my copy