Blackhole Motorsports :: View topic - Xpand Rally + StarForce = Useless

Xpand Rally + StarForce = Useless

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MrLipid

Joined: 26 Sep 2002
Posts: 13

Posted: Sun Feb 27, 07:31

I am simply furious. My son bought me, at my request, a copy of Xpand Rally for my birthday. Little did I realize it was a StarForce-infested trojan horse. I loaded it, played it once and, upon exiting, found my system virtually unusable. Clicking on one desktop icon opened all of them Upon rebooting, my system was in compatibility-mode and in safe mode. Yum. Even after I uninstalled the game, my system would not boot properly. Only after I downloaded the SFCLEAN.EXE utility -- which StarForce removes (!) if it finds it on a system -- could I get my system back. This is completely unacceptable. I have no problem with the idea of protecting intellectual property. I do have a problem with fouling up the systems of legitimate users. There is no excuse for rendering a system inert simply because...who knows why? StarForce found something? A CD burner? A virtual drive? SFCLEAN.EXE? Who knows? Hardly matters, though, since neither the game nor the system run once the game has been shut down after running the first time. Unbelievable. No wonder folks are running to consoles. Who needs this kind of grief? I am never buying (or asking anyone else to buy me) another Techland game.

Weston

Joined: 27 Jun 2003
Posts: 55

Posted: Sun Feb 27, 11:48

I know you've had a bad experience, but to be fair to the game, I've had no problems and I've got daemon tools, and starforce nightmare programs on my hardrive which you'd think might cause problems. Also no problems with other Starforce protected games (TOCA2, CM2005, GTR). I hope you can sort it out as Xpand Rally is a fantastic game.

MrLipid

Joined: 26 Sep 2002
Posts: 13

Posted: Sun Feb 27, 16:11

I have no problem being fair to the game. I would not have asked for it for my birthday if I'd thought it was mediocre. What I do have a problem with is the idea of having to sort out something that is not part of the game in order to play the game itself. Glad that others can just load and go. I'm obviously not one of those lucky folks. And I am not particularly interested in trying to diagnose what it is about my system that this title doesn't like. (This makes the second game I've encountered this year where a demo works flawlessly and the full game either doesn't load at all or blows up after running once. I'm putting it on the shelf for a while until I'm in the mood to tinker again.)

szszp

Joined: 07 Oct 2003
Posts: 861

Posted: Mon Feb 28, 01:15

Isn't it possible to "extract" Star force from a game, like a SF filter or something..

MrLipid

Joined: 26 Sep 2002
Posts: 13

Posted: Mon Feb 28, 05:09

Short answer? No. While it is possible to remove the StarForce drivers, any app which is tied to StarForce either will not run without the drivers present or will reinstall them when it is started. And then you get the sort of IDE failure I ran into. I would really prefer StarForce to just come out and say, "You can't run our app because we don't like your system." Instead, it completely screws up the system and says nothing whatsoever. Brilliant.

Quenaelin

Joined: 18 Oct 2004
Posts: 80

Posted: Mon Feb 28, 18:31

Only filter you can use is no-cd patch.

MrLipid

Joined: 26 Sep 2002
Posts: 13

Posted: Mon Feb 28, 23:10

While I see nothing wrong with using a no-CD patch to reduce the wear and tear on CDs, I have a real problem with being put in the position of needing a no-CD patch to simply play a game I've either purchased or been given as a gift. If the copy control is smart enough to identify apps it doesn't like, why can't it inform the user so that the user could have some idea which apps need to be removed? Or, given the deep mysteries of Windows, which long-orphaned .dll? As it stands now, the controlled app simply fails, providing no information. And in the case of StarForce, the IDE drives get screwed up just short of not working at all. Getting very tired of the copy control crapshoot.

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