the suffering ttb + starforce = reboot

[ecthelion79]

Hi everybody.
I just bought "the suffering - ties that bind" video game. For reasons that would take me forever to explain, I wish to play the game without having to insert the original (or any) cd in the drive (which is getting all the more difficult since starforce appeared on the scene). I tried achieving that by using jigsaw's mini image. I followed the instructions to the letter, and voila! the game started just fine -only to cause a reboot of my pc right after the "surreal software" logo. Bummer... BTW, the same happens even if I just unhook my dvd rom drive and mount jigsaw's mini image on dt4 (without using sfcure or sfnightmare).
Anyways, I was wondering if any of you fine gentlemen has had the same problem and/or has any idea why this happens.

[Joe Forster/STA]

Read the FAQ on solving/reporting problems with cracks.

[ecthelion79]

There's one thing that I have noticed all these years in support forums, and it sucks. When a person finds the sollution to his/her problem, he/she rarely posts to say how he/she managed to bypass/solve the problem, thus helping others, though he/she him/herself asked the help of the forum's members in the first place. Since I hate that habbit, here's how I got the game to play.
Apparently the problem was not the starforce protection, which I bypassed quite easily; by unplugging the power cord from my DVD-RW drive and mounting the image of the first cd -which I created with alcohol- on deamon tools 4 (I don't know if it matters, but I used only one virtual drive and all emulation options off). Both mini images found on gamecopyworld work as well.
The problem was that, as I stated in my previous post, windows forced the pc to reboot just before the main menu screen appeared. By snooping around on the net, I found a 1.1 patch which corrected some things, one of them being incompatibility with some amd processors (such as mine). However, to my great despair, the patch would not install itself. I got a 1628 error. After some more snooping around, I discovered that this was the American version of the patch, and that it wouldn't work on European versions of the game. I was about to give up, when I noticed a post where a fellow suggested that I should use software gfx and disable sound. Plus, I should disable the firewall. I went offline and disabled the firewall (zone alarm). I then opened the game's setup screen (it opens before the game loads). There was no option for software 3d acceleration, so I just minimized the gfx settings as much as possible (800X600 res, no antialising and no shadows). I couldn't disable the sound either, so I chose "SBLIVE" instead of the default "primary sound driver" option from the drop down list. And then I started the game. And it worked!
I don't know which of the above actions made it, but now it works!
Sorry for the big post, I just had to be as thorough as possible because someone else may face the same problem.
To the point, it seems that if you have dt4 and the will to unplugg your physical drives, it is very easy to bypass the starforce3 protection of the game.

[Joe Forster/STA]

Closed. Sorry, but, while your solution is interesting, it is related to a specific original game and, therefore, off-topic on this forum (you would've found that out if you read the FAQ, as I suggested); so, please, post it to the official game support forum instead. As for using Daemon Tools 4.x and physically unplugging IDE CD/DVD drives, it's already in the FAQ. If you have general information to add to the FAQ, please, post it in an appropriate manner. Thank you!