Hibernation Hijacking

[Einhorst]

Hi,

We've discovered a presumably new method in playing an Starforce protected game without the original CD/DVD (tested with Splinter Cell 3):

What you need is a Windows system with hibernation enabled(possible since NT), a live Windows CD(I recommend BartPE) and an original game CD/DVD ONCE(!)!

Install the game(full), patch/update if necessary, start it with the original CD/DVD and pass the Starforce-Control until you are in the main menu or so. You may normally take out the original CD/DVD by now, without having any problems in playing the game. Also you may shut down to hibernation and restart with the game still running.
Now here's the trick: set your machine to hibernation mode and reboot to your live windows using the live windows CD. Now make a save copy of your "hiberfil.sys"(the file containing an image of your RAM), found on your system partition. You now may return to your system and do whatever you like.
If you want to play your game set your system to hibernation again, reboot with your live windows, and overwrite your "hiberfil.sys" with your save copy. Reboot, and your game is running!

Known Issues:
-This may not be the easiest solution to the problem, but it's IMHO easier than unplugging your IDE devices, when SFN fails.
-You do need as much disk space as you have RAM, which meant for me I needed a gig of disk space. Not very economic...
-You probably won't be able to update the game again, without the original CD/DVD. Hardware changes might also leed to errors, especially when changing the RAM.
-After changing any files through your live windows, you need to completely reboot until your system notices the changes. So I recommend to reboot without hibernation(F8 start option) after you made your safe copy. I experienced some consistency errors because of this(nothing, that a chkdsk couldn't handle, but anyways...). Overwriting your hibernation file won't take such an effect, because of the same file size.
-A friend of mine tried to copy the "hiberfil.sys" from his also installed linux OS and corrupted it when copying it back the second time, probably because of some file rights violation. But this may work...
-Messing around with your hibernation file may cause system instability! Normally if the hibernation file is corrupt windows just deletes it. But you never know, so I DON'T TAKE ANY RESPONSIBILITY FOR THIS.

Hope anyone has fun with "Hibernation Hijacking".

Einhorst