Avoiding SecuROM

[Joe Forster/STA]

Do SecuROM games work inside a virtual machine, using the original, physical DVD in the physical machine's driver? (From a sandbox, I guess, not.) Probably not but, perhaps, you could make a full image of the original DVD in Alcohol 120% and mount it inside the virtual machine in a double-virtual drive, emulated by Alcohol 120% or Daemon Tools. (VMware Player recommended but Virtual PC 2007 might be fine, too.) If you switch changes on the (virtual) disk to temporal rather than persistent then all changes will be undone when you reset the virtual machine.

This way, you can prevent any "infection" of your (virtual) machine by any software, e.g. SecuROM. I wouldn't bother to go this far, though: it is not SecuROM that has really bad rumors, it's rather Starforce as the latter has its damn driver installed and running all the time, interfering with low-level communication of IDE drives, while the former stops its driver as soon as you exit the protected software. So put your fear aside and try the game first with the copy protection still in place: I promise it won't hurt.

And, guys, stop the fighting, it won't get us anywhere...