Starforce Worries

[StormDragon]

So I order PoP The Two Thrones for the PC, right? Then as I'm wandering around, I keep hearing this stuff about Starforce or some-such. That it harms your comp and/or disk-drives. I want to know if you've any problems with it, or I don't have to worry that much. And also if I can side-step the problem by getting the installation disk off the internet and playing with the original cds.

(And it's arriving on Monday, so it's too late to cancel the order :p)

Edit: I'm reading a major forum post about this from some official Ubisoft person, so I'll delete this post once I'm completely sure about stuff.

[Rezantis]

It doesn't do damage, but the drivers it installs can sometimes cause issues, much like any other.

It's unlikely to be a particular problem for you.  People hate them because they're asswipes.

[Dracos]

Rez is somewhat mistaken.

It can do damage and it will devestate pc performance.  Avoid anything with it.  I've had friends that got it on their machine and come to me bewildered on why everything was going slow as molasses or their cd drives vanishing(COMMON) or stuff just crashing.

I don't know much about sidestepping it.  Thought Ubisoft totally dropped that after someone leveled a pretty large lawsuit at them for packaging it with it.

Starforce, aside, is the most effective anticopy thing on the market, but it really does that by methods that shouldn't be employed by it.  In general, uninstallers of such games tend to LEAVE the starforce stuff behind, figuring others might be using it and 'no harm, no foul' to leaving it there.

Dracos

[StormDragon]

This is by some dude at the Ubisoft forums. Use this for future reference, if you want.

For those of you that are getting (Code 41)errors. with your CD/DVD drive in the device manager after using/removing an SF enabled game.

Use the SF removal tool: Get it here!

and reboot, if you still get (code 41)

(CODE 41):


Windows successfully loaded the device driver for this hardware but cannot find the hardware device. (Code 41)

To workaround this behavior:

Create a restore point start menu-all programs-accessories-system tools-System restore and follw the prompts.

1. Save the filter driver registry entries, just in case of problems, goto start menu-run type in "CMD.exe" without the " " then (left click ok) and at the Command shell prompt type in:

regedit /a SaveFilters.reg HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}


and 'hit' enter, that should save the filters section of the registry.

2. using 'notepad' Copy / Paste the following and save it to a NoFilter.reg file in the root , windows or ,my documents folder:

REGEDIT4

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}]
"UpperFilters"=-
"LowerFilters"=-

3. Merge the NoFilter.reg file with your registry or start menu-run type in "regedit /s NoFilter.reg" without the " " and click OK.

4. Shutdown and restart your computer.

If you notice loss of functionality in any remaining DVD/CD-ROM software, you may need to uninstall and re-install it.

Oddly enough you may also need to uninstall and reinstall windows media player.

Should it all go belly up, boot into safe mode and carry out a system restore to the previously saved restore point, or at a command shell type "regedit /s SaveFilters.reg" to merge the previous filters back.

Also, some other links that may help. The second link contains the tools needed to bypass Starforce.

One last thing, how reliable is system restore? I really want to play this game, so I'm going to be as careful as I can. Before installing the game I will create a sr point then after I'm done reverting back to the point. Either that or dishing out another $20 bucks for the PS2 version and keeping the PC box for eyecandy.