AntiStarforce Tool!!

[Meep]

Just my luck that I am one with problem.

I can mount the CD-Rom images, and I can use my CD Rom drives.

But when I try to run one of these programs that use the Virtual cd rom drives, they crash.

I just tried running Scrapland to play, did not update any protections.

I removed primary IDE Channel and Secondary IDE CHannel and rebooted machine.

I can run HL2 from DVD drive no problem, same with Sims 2, X2 The Threat,Office 2003 install,Rise of Nations, Spell force..I have a lot of purchase games with original CDs that work.

The problem is once software like Need For Speed UNderground 2 tries to access the Virtual CD Rom, whether it is Alcohol 120% or Daemon Tools, these programs crash, no error message from program itself, just an Exception Error from Windows.

I can even read and install programs from the Mounted drives if I make CD Images, I just cannot then run the program from the hard disk, using the Mounted drive as a source for the CD-Rom.

It seems that in trying to get around StarForce protection, have found a perfect way to block people from using popular CD Emulation programs to run protected software from the Hard Disk?

What else could I try to fix this?

[krondike]

read the regedit fix for the protection to skip/not see the emulations program.

BUT try to reinstall Alcohol 120% and deamon. HAve just those 2 installed other emulation get coughted! Then do the regedit fix, search in the forum to find instructions..

[Meep]

Are you referring to switching the Read permissions to Deny to prevent software from discovering the PnP Bios Extension entry in the device manager?

That currently isn't set, so that's not the issue. The problem is that the programs actually crash with an Exception error when I try to run them. I've never had to use, nor did I know about, any registry manipulations to get these titles to run, and they did before.

[Meep]

Fixed it.

I reinstalled Direct X 9c and everything works fine.

Now I'm not sure whether this was a problem with StarF**K at all, but I'm not going to mess around with it again to find out.

Still a warning to those that might try the program, to be careful

Thanks much to those that tried to help.

Cheers.

[bierhuettl]

There are cracks out for many starforce games now, including the fall. you do not need SF here anymore

[Meep]

Ok, after backing up before installing SP2, I decided to test out starf**k and Scrapland just for the heck of it.

I don't know what happened the first time, but it works now.

Download the mini image from GCW (or make one yourself from your CD), run starf**k.
Select Patch blacklist, and disable CD Roms (Normal worked for me after entering my correct settings in Preferences).

Then just run Scrapland.

It should pick up the mini image from Daemon Tools and work just fine.

Put the cd in a safe place afterward

Hope this helps someone, and it certainly is a big pain getting games to run without the game CDs now.

If there were CD Jukebox type drives out there where you could rotate CDs (6 disc cd changer for the PC? ) I might even invest in one.

Too many games, too many game cds..too much switching in and out Although I do it with the Xbox, on the PC it just seems..different.

Here's hoping more games get distributed via services like Steam.

Cheers