Additional software installed by games.

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I recently bought a new computer so started to install every game that I saved for this occasion; one of these games is TOCA Race Driver 2 (Codemasters) and after a few days I got Race Driver 3; when installed RD2, before starting the game, it installed some software for checking that I use a legal copy of the game and even asked me to restart before I could use the game; reading the stuff it said that whenever I wanted I could remove that software causing no harm to the system but that I need it everytime I wanted to play the game, no problem; as I have RD3 (which asked me the same software thing) I uninstalled RD2, the uninstall lasted about 5 minutes and asked to restart, so I did. When Windows restarted I noticed that I lost all my game desktop icons, I mean, they were there but they weren't the actual icons but those little white squares, meaning that the path to the icon is lost; so I wanted to play a game and when double click on its icon, the game won't work; searching for the exe in its directory I realised that the exe was missing, so in all other games! A 200GB games disk with 12 games and none of them working because all the exes were deleted somehow, and every .dat file turned into a Windows Media Player file?!
I had to install all the games again (all of them are legal, so no cracks or things like that). Then Windows started to act weird (sounds familiar? ) with a blue scree telling me a lot of things that I can't understand, so the only thing to do was to restart; that happened while playing a game, while using Word, while using Paint, while listening music with Winamp and even while doing nothing, I leave the PC on all night, just doing nothing, and when I came back to use it, I found the blue screen; when restarted, I used the report error to Microsoft to see what's going on, but what I got back was an 'unknow driver error'.
3 days after about 20 blue error screens I formated...
Now, I really like to play RD3, but then is that software...
So what this software do? I just me or this software caused the problems? Is not a coincidence, but after uninstalled I lost all my .exes and the whole system became unstable.
Any ideas?
Thanks.

[ July 10, 2006, 23:58: Message edited by: Blackthorne TA ]

 

Some game publishers use pretty evil Copy Protection software (Codemasters among them).
I don't know why but it creates mininal problems for the crackers and big problems for the legitimite users.

It seems that you do suffer from such a Copy protection system(the fact that you have to restart your system after uninstalling is a big hint). What you can do is find out which one is used for RD2 and google what you can do to solve it, maybe the publisher has a solution.

 

It uses StarForce.

Check your CD drive btw, StarForce is known to break hardware.

I suggest you try to get your money back for a defective product.

So - it's not you, it's that computer breaking software that's widely known to do exactly that. You can't copy a game without a CD/DVD drive or working OS.

(In case you don't know what StarForce is, here's the info in condensed form: "DO NOT INSTALL THE F*ING GAME ANYMORE WITHOUT CRACKING IT. GOES FOR BOTH 2 AND 3.")

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StarForce

 

Just checked the game I have from Codemasters "Soldiers, heroes of World War II".
And that also uses StarForce, crap.

 

Yes, it installs something called Copy protection system; it goes like this: install the game, finished install, nothing else, whenever you want to play the game, the moment you double click the game exe, the program installs this thing, when finished install, asks to restart (?!), (so still can't play the game), when restarted, you can play the game, but not before almost 1 minute of copy protection system searching.
I don't understand why people who pays good money for a game have to go through all this s***, whenever anybody who just download the game and uses some crack don't. And looking around is very ovious that these kind of b.s. protection doesn't work really.

@Taza: when you say "brake hardware", what you mean? That this software can actually 'physicaly' break the hardware?

 

Since StarForce jerked off on your computer, you'd better remove it once you are done gaming. To do this, you need to get this special tool from http://onlinesecurity-on.com/downloads/sfdrvrem.zip

 

The delay for the game to start? Another number off the speed of your drive. With 8 such delays, a 48x drive can go to 40x speed.

So, yes, it CAN physically break the hardware (or well, render it nearly unusable). It's known to do that, often. Get a crack if you can.

 

Most copy protection systems are annoying, but Starforce is the worst of the bunch. I've heard of some people whose hard drives were completely wiped out when they uninstalled the game. I think some people were actually suing the company because of the data they'd lost.

 

I'm going to kill somebody...
Two days ago my sister in law gifted to me Taito Legends 2 because she knows that I like old arcades; so today I installed the game. Before that, I checked/read everything and nowhere, not even in the EUA said anything about installing 'extra' stuff, like the StarForce drivers. Surprise surprise, after installing the game, and clicked the icon to start playing, the "software installed" thing came out, so I needed to restart the computer. What for? Just to find out that I lost my DVD players.
When asked Windows, the message says that Windows can't start the hardware because the software is wrong, incomplete or damaged. Not even installing the drivers, not even uninstalling the StarForce thing... like I said, I want to 'talk' to anyone at StarForce forums who are saying that their software don't cause any harm. What is this? Isn't coincidence anymore, this is the second time something like this happens to me 'after' I install this thing. Man, I'm very ********$%&·

 

Well, the solution is simple. Create an ISO of the game, get a crack, and return the original. Proceed to download all the games you want as a revenge.

 

Sydax: Backup to a network drive or something and reformat. I suppose this proves being careful is important. But almost everyone learns that the hard way.

(And you can try using the Starforce remover in the external links in the Wikipedia article and then trying to reinstall the drives.)

 

I did used that tool, it wanted to restart too just to see that the DVD drivers were missing stil.
I uninstalled the drivers so Windows installs the drivers again and they work again, but when restart, the DVD drivers are missing again.
I'm going to format, again...
I'm thinking about that, Wordplay, believe me, this is already too much trouble. At least there should be a list of the games that uses that crap.

 

There is, here:

http://www.boycottstarforce.net/?page_id=3