Just to clear some confusion here: almost ALL protections (Starforce, Safedisk, Securom) load device drivers (SecuRom
installs drivers from v7 onwards). For example, safedisc installs a driver called "secdrv.sys" in windows\system32\drivers - there is an update for it here:
http://www.macrovision.com/products/...ownloads.shtml
However, these drivers are not obtrusive (I have the Safedisk driver installed in all my PCs) and cause no issues (apart from an error with older Safedisc drivers, fixed from the page above). Each well-known protection apart from StarForce loads ONE driver (e.g. secdrv). On the other hand, StarForce installs a LOT of drivers (about 6 or so) that mess with the normal operation of the PC and they tamper with things they are not supposed to (e.g. the PC's IDE channels). That's what's causing the BSODs and system instabilities. The issue is not that StarForce uses device drivers, it's about the damage these drivers cause to the systems they are installed, as well as the things they do behind the back of the user. Note that StarForce is the ONLY protection that has an uninstall program for their drivers - they "silently" aknowledge that their own program is causing problems to PCs it's installed on. No other protection offers uninstall programs, because no user has had issues with these drivers.
I'm mentioning this because StarForce authors claim that all protections use device drivers and that user eggagerate when they talk about the SF drivers. This is not the case, as their drivers are far more complex and affect many things in a system they are installed on.
To sum up, the issue here is that StarForce drivers are complex, they are many (not one, as most protections), they tamper with things they are not supposed to and they do a lot of nasty things "under the hood". This causes system instabilities, BSODs and a lot of unnecessary grievance just to protect some games. Finally, SF protected games do NOT work on Windows 64-bit without a vendor patch, and very few vendors have supplied such patches
Like others do, I too recommend all my friends not to install SF protected games for the sole reason that SF drivers are a major pain in the ass
Wikipedia has a nice article about StarForce here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starforce
There is also an article with the response of Starforce to many user's comments here:
http://www.simhq.com/_technology/technology_061a.html
and a discussion thread about it here:
http://www.simhq.com/simhq3/sims/boa...;f=37;t=007110
There is also a very good page dedicated to boycotting StarForce
here:
http://www.glop.org/starforce/
Note that StarForce itself has a page containing their latest drivers, an uninstall program and some answers to common questions here:
http://www.star-force.com/protection/users/