software way to hide ide (for newest starforce)?

[dermoritz]

is there a software way for hiding ide drives from newest sf? for me neither sfnightmare nor switching off the corresponding ide channel (sec. master and slave) in bios doesn't work!

by the way: how does sf make this?- recognizing bios-switched-off ide drives

[Reef]

The BIOS is actually just a piece of software on a programmable chip (EEPROM).
So if your BIOS can detect drives, then any other software can also detect them.

[Dark Arbitor]

There's a program called Win2k3 Node Disabler which pretty much does the same thing. You can look into that.

Arb

[Underheaven]

...

It depends on your OS but sfnightmare should work on XP. I bet you're not clicking the right buttons in the right order.

[ragalthar]

I tried SFN with SF v3.5.xx and I can't get Xі: Reunion (patched to v 1.2.1) running from the Alcohol image. Which would be the right order to click the buttons in SFN? I do have my harddrive on master at bus 0 and my two DVD drives at master and slave at bus 1. When I press 'disable CD' the drives disappear from my WinXP SP2 - meaning I only got my virtual DVD-ROM drive left - but the game still suggests I should try another drive.

ragalthar

[dermoritz]

yes - that was my problem: which buttons must be pressed in which order (sfnm)?

[Dark Arbitor]

Check here for instructions on getting X3 running. It may also help you with other games if you are using SFN.

Arb

[ragalthar]

@ Dark Arbitor: tried that, doesn't work. Although the IDE drives disappear in Windows (I just see the letter for my virtual drive) the game still tells me to try it in a different drive.

Anybody else got an idea?

[Dark Arbitor]

You may want to try physically unplugging your drives. I know that's a pain (which is why I'm eagerly awaiting the IDE-jammer and DT4 Pro), but try it at least once and see if you still have that problem. Some versions of SF seem to detect that you still have drives plugged in despite have them software-disabled. Power off your machine, pull the power plug on your optical IDE drives, and fire your machine back up. At least do it once to see if that even works, then you can at least eliminate some variables from the problem.

Arb

P.S. If you haven't already tried unplugging, that is...

[NetSoerfer]

StarForce Nightmare works with StarForce 3.4, SafeDisc 4.6, SecuROM 7.

However, it does not work with StarForce 3.5/3.6, you'll need to unplug your drives to defeat that copy protection.

[dermoritz]

to sum it up: ther is no software way to hide the drives?!

[Glass]

No, there is no software way to hide IDE devices from latest StarForce. You MUST unplug, period. (For now)

[Methadon]

But you doesn't need to unplug it physically for all starforce versions.
I'll think you can use SFN up to v3.6.

[Underheaven]

...

3.4 I thought.

[Dochilt]

Yes, yes work with SF 3.5/3.6... Try with SFN to disable CD, disable node, disable IDE channel on is located your CDROMS(probably Secondary) and try to mount a valid image with V4(and if you prefer enable all the options of emulation in it).

For deactivate it: enable node, enable cd, enable ide channel.. etc etc..