CONFIRMED - Race Driver 2 workaround guide.

[The Gauge]

Hello everyone. I've been picking up bits and pieces of potential workarounds for TOCA Race Driver 2 but each one I've found has been either incomplete or wrong in places. I thought I'd cobble this quick guide together to illustrate how to play TRD2 with no dvd and no crack. The requirements are a bitch, I realise, but if you're fortunate enough to have 2 PCs on a network then you're in business.


Requirements:

Alcohol 120%
2 computers on your network; referred to as "game" PC and "second" PC.
Second PC must have a shared folder.
All harddrives on your primary IDE controller and all CD/DVD drives on your secondary IDE controller.
BIOS capable of disabling your secondary IDE controller.


Procedure:

1. Install latest version of Alcohol 120%.
2. Rip the TRD2 DVD to .mds image file.
3. Copy image into the shared folder on the second PC on your LAN.
4. In Alcohol 120% on game PC, go to Emulation configuration and tick ALL emulation types under "Emulation" and "Emulation Extra".
5. In My Computer, right-click on your virtual drive and choose "Mount Image..."
6. In the dialogue box that opens, navigate to Network Neighbourhood / My Network Places and open the TRD2 image off the second PC across the network.
7. Install TRD2 on your game PC across the network.
8. When the installation is complete the computer will need to reboot. (You may need to click "Play" on the TRD2 menu to get the reboot prompt). This is the Copy Protection System finishing its install.

IMPORTANT: Before you attempt to play the game you MUST do the following:

9. Reboot your computer and enter the BIOS setup.
10. Navigate through your BIOS settings and DISABLE your secondary IDE controller.
11. Save your BIOS settings and reboot your computer.

12. The computer will reboot without any of your CD/DVD drives available.
13. Remount the networked image and click "Play" from the menu.
14. Enter your TRD2 DVD-key, wait for the disk check to complete and the game should boot up.


Some points to note:

If your BIOS doesn't support disabling of the IDE controllers, replace steps 9-11 with "open your PC case and unplug your CD/DVD drives". The Copy Protection System will instruct you to place the game CD in another drive if it detects ANY IDE-based CD-Rom on your system. For the workaround to be successful using Alcohol, the Protection system must not be able to see any IDE optical drives whatsoever and your DVD image must not be mounted on a local IDE device.

Due to StarForce's hidden device drivers, which monitor and modify system IDE access, the game MUST be installed from the second PC. I don't believe you can install the game locally and then use the remote image to start the game.

Only the first installation of TRD2 installs the Copy Protection System on your computer (characterised by the reboot) and this installation must be done across the network. To the best of my knowledge, uninstalling and reinstalling the game over the network will not fix this but I've not fully tested this.

If the Copy Protection System says "invalid disk" when you start the game, try several more times. So far, in my experience, the game boots up about 1 in 4 attempts.

It's possible that System Restore may be able to rollback your system prior to the installation and remove the StarForce Protection drivers, but I haven't tested this. A removal tool can be found on Codemaster's website.

This may seem like a massive process to go through for one game, but when you've done everything correctly, each time you want to play TRD2, you just need to reboot to disable your 2nd IDE controller, mount the image across the network and you're away.

More information, LOTS of griping and the driver removal tool can be found here:
http://community.codemasters.com/for...threadid=41263


Hope this helps.