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Starforce Protection (previously SC4)
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Junior Member
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6. June 2006 @ 05:40 |
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I am thinking of buying sim city 4 & its expansions despite its age. Any opinions on whether or not I'd be wasting my money?
Paladin
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keithyb
Member
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6. June 2006 @ 23:46 |
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AMD 4200+ x 2 over clocked to 2.6
BFG Geforce 7800 GT OC 256mb PCI-E
2 GB pc 3200 Corsair Ram
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keithyb
Member
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6. June 2006 @ 23:48 |
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AMD 4200+ x 2 over clocked to 2.6
BFG Geforce 7800 GT OC 256mb PCI-E
2 GB pc 3200 Corsair Ram
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Junior Member
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7. June 2006 @ 01:48 |
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thanks for the link - Ill check it out.
Paladin
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Xian
Senior Member
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7. June 2006 @ 16:12 |
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It's still the best of it's kind. My children still spend a couple hours a week on it, building up their city and then unleashing some disaster to destroy it.
There is a new one called City Life that just came out that appears to be very similar to Sim City, but it's protected by Starforce so I won't be getting it. Even the demo of it has Starforce on it. I hope the software companies realize that their invasive DRM is driving paying customers away.
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Junior Member
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7. June 2006 @ 23:44 |
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please explain!!
What is Starforce
& what is invasive DRM?
Paladin
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keithyb
Member
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8. June 2006 @ 01:29 |
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Ubisoft has dropped starforce in all future games. That was a very good sign. DRM ----> http://www.afterdawn.com/glossary/terms/drm.cfm
Starforce is a copy protection that installes drivers on your computer before you can run the game. It uses the drivers to check your key and your CD rom drive for validation. The problem is that there are 10000 post about how it's been destorying computer hard drives and makeing them crash and so forth. There was a five million dollar lawsuite brought against Ubisoft claiming that the protection was destory their hard drivers. They dropped it in all future games and are currently using SecurRom protection which does not install drivers on your PC.
AMD 4200+ x 2 over clocked to 2.6
BFG Geforce 7800 GT OC 256mb PCI-E
2 GB pc 3200 Corsair Ram
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Junior Member
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8. June 2006 @ 02:40 |
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I can see how destroying hard drives is bad, but why does it do that? Surely its just a simple program which checks for keys and so forth? Or did they try and embed it somewhere they weren't supposed to?
Paladin
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Xian
Senior Member
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8. June 2006 @ 12:19 |
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The Starforce drivers are installed at Ring 0, which should only be used by System level drivers such as the Windows Kernel, Firewalls, Antivirus, and the like, not a game. Normally a program will run in Ring 3 (User mode). In some cases there have been reported conflicts with the drivers, something you don't want at Ring 0 when there is a potential for data corruption.
http://news.com.com/5208-7349-0.html?forumID=1&threadID=11535&mes...
More info there and of course Starforce has a rebuttal on their website.
http://www.star-force.com/protection/protection.phtml?c=353
Basically saying that others do it too. My opinion is that if install a firewall or antivirus, yes I want it operating at Ring 0, being able to intercept a problem. I don't want or need a Ring 0 driver on my system just to be able to play a game.
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Junior Member
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18. June 2006 @ 04:57 |
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That rebuttle by Starforce Tech has quite a scary list of ring-0 applications. So does it mean that using programs like Daemon Tools might be bad? Is it better just to write a CD itself rather than just using its image?
how do you find out what games use starforce to protect their product? I think i want to steer clear of those.
Paladin
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levski_26
Newbie
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29. July 2006 @ 13:25 |
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There are a few games I've tried running and giving up after the first few min.
Some of the games include: Toca Race Driver 3, Age of Pirates, and now this new game (which looks pretty awsome actually) called Rise and Fall. There are tons more im sure. I'd stay away from them though.
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Junior Member
3 product reviews
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23. September 2006 @ 19:09 |
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i HATE starforce, however how can it "destroy a hdd"? (i can see how it could destroy an optical drive) in the worse case wouldnt u just end up haveing to low level format and re-install windows? (i dont think even starforce could cause a head crash)
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