Ah ok, strange...
Mine won't start if I DO use either SD4\SR drive hiders, even when closed after hiding the drives
I've been trying for days to make a backup of me courses disc, found out it was a scratch on the original cd, so instead of getting unreadable sectors from 800+ onwards. I was getting them from 275-300, didn't realise until I noticed that the original wasn't even working. Eventually after loads of Mr Sheen on the original disc managed to get it to read properly.
So if this was a StarForce game I'd have been screwed...
Can't think of a better reason for legally allowing backups of discs!!!
ah well anyway