Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Interesting Discovery and working on a fix to beat StarForce

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • Interesting Discovery and working on a fix to beat StarForce

    Hi to all At Daemon Tools

    Ok lets get a few things straight, I download demos I do not download games and believe that the game creators, programers, and deserve there money as its there bread and butter and they do alot of work.

    However I also believe that we as a consumer should be able to be able to backup your STORE bought games without the need to bypass this protection stuff as it protects your discs from damage and protects your store bought investments.

    Anyway 3 days ago I went and bought UFO:AfterShock I have most Xcom games they my favorite style of game anyway I installed it in my (DVD) drive and was horrified to see that during transit (or in the shop) it had a rather small but scary scuff on it However the game did install fine.

    So I got out the old DVD writer out and opened alcohol and backed up the game, I then put my Original Disc back in the case and put it with the rest of my colection only to have to bring it out everytime I play it because of this dam starforce So I read all you guys thoughts and problems with star force and tried all the methods but the only one that worked was Daemon tools 4 and disconecting my drives.

    So I decided to fiddle and found a few really funny things.

    1. My game will work without disconnecting or hiding my CD Writer I'm assuming that starforce only detects the IDE Drive for the media the original game is on so I found by mounting a created iso and simply removing the DVD Writer makes it work.

    2. I have tried pairing my DVD Writer up with hard drive and the protection just froze, I tried putting my CD Writer as a Master on the Second IDE Channel but the dam star force got the DVD writer again.

    3. After Further research I found out that starforce Nightmare simply disables the windows Optical drives profile the later protection version detects it and wont work I am also researching software ways to stop windows detecting the drive period not just hiding them but it seems hard cos windows uses plug and play however I believe maybe by modifying the bus controller driver on my system I maybe able to get around this, however I would like anyone who is willing to help bash starforce to put up your starForce problems and any litle tweaks and errors you find out so we can work on them.

    Because we all know there isn't a single program that can't be reverse engineered they just take time.

  • #2
    Nice ... i will try this when i get a copy of SC:CT (to try only... i want to buy it for online play.Its cheaper than my patience! )
    What about tricking winXP to think every drive is a SCSI drive ? (the effect when you buy an extra IDE controller,makes all your drives registered as SCSI drives.Excuse my harsh descriptional language).I asked this in a post here on this thread (General copy discussion) and would like your opinion or your answers if possible. It was my only post,before this ,so it wont be hard to find

    Thanks !

    p.s.: first of all,im not a programer so thats why i dont have such an elaborate language

    Comment


    • #3
      The DT crew are working on a IDE-Jammer, but I don't know how the progress is going.

      Comment


      • #4
        Originally Posted by MindFever
        What about tricking winXP to think every drive is a SCSI drive ? (the effect when you buy an extra IDE controller,makes all your drives registered as SCSI drives.Excuse my harsh descriptional language)
        Possible i suppose... But you'd proberbly have to convince the computer the IDE Controler and bus are both SCSI... Actually anyone try an external USB Cd drive, that work? Also i wonder is there any sort of SCSI card that you can plug IDE drives into to get them to report as scsi drives? Must look into it...

        Comment


        • #5
          Originally Posted by TigRon
          Possible i suppose... But you'd proberbly have to convince the computer the IDE Controler and bus are both SCSI... Actually anyone try an external USB Cd drive, that work? Also i wonder is there any sort of SCSI card that you can plug IDE drives into to get them to report as scsi drives? Must look into it...
          i have an ide to usb kit (available for around $15-$20) and SCCT is working perfectly in DT4. I actually have a different prob altogether (NVRaid + DT4 + SF = Crash) but guys on the forums found a solution.

          now works perfectly. no need for starforce nightmare, no need to disconnect drives (and even if i do... its just a matter of plugging out the little usb plug from the back and plugging it back in afterwards )
          Athlon X2 3800
          2gb DDR400
          6800nu -> 16x6
          2x160 SATA Raid, 160gb + 80gb + 80gb IDE

          Comment


          • #6
            xeroxide:yeah... you reported this discovery ,correct?

            TigRon:well,with the external drive ,i heard it works too...but its more expensive than the game itself,so its pointless to buy it It would be cool to trick the system like that ,as you said... do you have an idea how to do it?Theoreticaly i mean...

            Comment


            • #7
              thanks guys

              Hi to all at daemon tools again.

              Thanks to everyone for not slating my post and my discovery,
              anyways I believe scsi once had its own form of raid at one stage plz correct me if I'm wrong,

              but I also remeber that raid dosent support CD/DVD Rom Drives, so the raid hacks are not gonna work.

              but 1 Idea was not to hide the IDE drives from your OS but for the OS to identify them as Usb drivers or as Hard Drives this would be extreamly difficult because each device firmware and the os plug and play would have to be hacked and I can't do that on my own but that would be 1 way if anyone has the knoledge we may bypass starforce.

              The other way would be to get windows not to detect the drives in hardware manager again no easy task.

              One hack I did today was kinda silly really but was effective I got out a drill and drilled two small holes in my tower case side pannel and added two small switches to both power connectors so I can just reboot and switch off the drives and my bios says theres no drives attached hench the little hack makes it possibvle for me to disable the effected drive and can play the game after a reboot. again some mainboards will still detect the drive so this isn't fool proof eaither.

              I'll keep everyone posted on my progress and ideas if anyone would like to add anything feel free and thanks again for making some good points and not slating my first post

              thanks

              Comment

              Working...
              X