starforce, securom, etc...

Speaking from experience, I bought silent hunter 3 a couple of years back and after about a month of playing my dvd-drive stopped working and would just spin my DVD at high speeds. I thought that starforce was the likely culprit so i uninstalled it, and uninstalled the starforce drivers using the official removal tool. What happened next, my hard drive died in 2 days (coincidence?).

So i got my DVD drive fixed, reinstalled SH3, and used the crack to play it since the crack would prevent SF from being installed and i've had no problems since.

That's my personal experience. I'm not sure whether the HD failure is SF related but it happened a couple days after i removed the SF drivers, so i'm suspicious. 

It might be because starfoce and such is evil incarnate?

Starforce and Securom are just stupid as it only bothers the guys that buy the game to hell and not the one getting it illegal as no-cd crack is a miracle cure against starforce and securom, I buy all my games but when I buy something with starforce on I get a no-cd crack as fast as I can (btw, those aren't illegal if you have bought the game, at-least not here.) because I have also had my share of DVD readers gone hay-wire because of starforce... 

Speaking from experience, I bought silent hunter 3 a couple of years back and after about a month of playing my dvd-drive stopped working and would just spin my DVD at high speeds. I thought that starforce was the likely culprit so i uninstalled it, and uninstalled the starforce drivers using the official removal tool. What happened next, my hard drive died in 2 days (coincidence?).

So i got my DVD drive fixed, reinstalled SH3, and used the crack to play it since the crack would prevent SF from being installed and i've had no problems since.

That's my personal experience. I'm not sure whether the HD failure is SF related but it happened a couple days after i removed the SF drivers, so i'm suspicious.

spierdalaj666

More than likely.  And the fact that Starforce didn't have an immediate effect on your system leads me to believe that your DVD issue wasn't Starforce related either.  People having issues with starforce, will generally report the issue happening immediately after installing the starforce driver.  It wouldn't do harm "over time". 

[QUOTE="spierdalaj666"]

Speaking from experience, I bought silent hunter 3 a couple of years back and after about a month of playing my dvd-drive stopped working and would just spin my DVD at high speeds. I thought that starforce was the likely culprit so i uninstalled it, and uninstalled the starforce drivers using the official removal tool. What happened next, my hard drive died in 2 days (coincidence?).

So i got my DVD drive fixed, reinstalled SH3, and used the crack to play it since the crack would prevent SF from being installed and i've had no problems since.

That's my personal experience. I'm not sure whether the HD failure is SF related but it happened a couple days after i removed the SF drivers, so i'm suspicious.

Johnny_Rock

More than likely. And the fact that Starforce didn't have an immediate effect on your system leads me to believe that your DVD issue wasn't Starforce related either. People having issues with starforce, will generally report the issue happening immediately after installing the starforce driver. It wouldn't do harm "over time".

With evil incarnate, you will never know! 

[QUOTE="spierdalaj666"]

Speaking from experience, I bought silent hunter 3 a couple of years back and after about a month of playing my dvd-drive stopped working and would just spin my DVD at high speeds. I thought that starforce was the likely culprit so i uninstalled it, and uninstalled the starforce drivers using the official removal tool. What happened next, my hard drive died in 2 days (coincidence?).

So i got my DVD drive fixed, reinstalled SH3, and used the crack to play it since the crack would prevent SF from being installed and i've had no problems since.

That's my personal experience. I'm not sure whether the HD failure is SF related but it happened a couple days after i removed the SF drivers, so i'm suspicious.

Johnny_Rock

More than likely. And the fact that Starforce didn't have an immediate effect on your system leads me to believe that your DVD issue wasn't Starforce related either. People having issues with starforce, will generally report the issue happening immediately after installing the starforce driver. It wouldn't do harm "over time".

You may be right. However, what i failed to mention were two things, my DVD drive was only 6 months old at the time and after having it fixed, it has been functioning properly. As for the hard drive, I failed to mention to that after uninstalling the SF drivers, i started getting I/O errors and i could not open certain directories in my HD. Again, this was not immediately after uninstalling the drivers, but within 2 days, so i don't know.

Suffice to say, i've had no problems with any of my hardware during the last SF-free year, so while the HD problem could have been a coincidence, i'm still suspicious. 

Companies also hurting sales with that starforce junk. I wanted City Life awhile back and never got it because of that Starforce crap. Alot of poeple don't buy Starforce games.Sleepyz

Very true. Ubisoft dropped StarForce. Though Ubisoft never oficially acknowledged that it was because of StarForce's overbearing protection schemes. Also, I am one of those gamers that refuses to buy a game that uses StarForce. Kind of sucks because I wanted to buy Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory (which uses StarForce), but I stuck by my principles.

I don't mind SecuROM and SafeDisc, as I've never had a problem with either. Though, I mostly just use Daemon Tools and a mini disc image to play my games. That way I don't have to worry about swapping discs and having them get scratched up in the process, and I don't have to worry about some cracked EXE making it impossible for me to update or causing any other such problems. I don't mind security schemes, but when a security scheme can cause damage to drives and system instability, that is taking things WAY too far.

And of course there was the Galactic Civilization II stunt that Starforce pulled: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galactic_Civilizations_II:_Dread_Lords#Starforce_controversy

Also see here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StarForce  and here: http://forums.galciv2.com/index.aspx?forumid=161&aid=106741&c=1 and the follow-up they mention.