How to defeat Starforce by spending 20/20$ (full IDE support)

[mrclark]

I never thought of connecting my optical drive to my promise controller. The thought of disc/reconn ide cables never appealed to me so my little stash of sf games have been literally untouched in the hopes of a solution like this. Really looking forward to trying this method out.

[Sleek24]

This worked for me using a Silicon Image ATA/133 controller, All games worked fine except worms 4 , But what is annoying is the Controller BIOS at startup, Is there anyway to get rid of it without disabling the card? And also as all my drives now show up as SCSI drives i cannot boot a CD from them at startup,Anyway around this anyone?

[DarkusChi]

Another Happy Camper

Thanks Zak, after reading your post tryed an old Fast Track TX 100 2 raid controller I had lying around , but No dice, then at a computer fair 2 weeks ago got a ITE 8212 Raid controller again no joy (was a cheap card so bios was not flashable, so could not flash it with updated ATAPI Bios), but today swaped it for an ITE 8212 NON Raid version and the card can see my NEC Duel Layer writer. Works a treat with both Starforce 3.xx and SecuROM 7.xx
Thanks Again.

[Spaceman_Bob]

I have an on-board RAID controller on my motherboard (ASUS P4P800 Deluxe).
If I plug my optical drives into that, will that solution work?
Or do I actually have to buy a separate controller card?

[Underheaven]

...

Onboard anything won't work (unless you have an nvidia 3/4 board).

[Insane5000]

Newest Starforce 3.7(Name of the Game is The Stalin Subway) works not more with IDE-Raidcontroller,the IDE-Jammer is now the last solution when itґs done.

[Underheaven]

PCI expansion card

Insane5000, are you talking about an IDE-Raidcontroller on your motherboard or on a PCI expansion card?

[Insane5000]

PCI-Card with SIL0680 Chip.

[Alexander]

@Insane500

Hi,

I own the same RAID controller. So far all of my SF3 games are working without unplugging anything.

So my question is: do you use the RAID controller as RAID controller? In this case you installed the RAID drivers of the controller. Or did you flash it to a normal IDE card?

And have you installed also Alcohol with its virtual drive?

Thank you for a short reply.

Greetings
Alexander

[Insane5000]

All other Version of Starforce 3.4-3.6 are not a problem to play,they work.

Only Starforce 3.7 makes my life harder.

My Controller has the medley driver installed
(Silicon Image SiI 0680 ATA/133 Controller).

Nero is the only Copyprog on my PC!

No other Virtual Drives are installed(Alcohol)

[Alexander]

@Insane5000

Hi,

I assume that the new SF3.7 can detect the drives by using the installed RAID controller drivers from your Sil680 RAID controller card like Windows does it. To verify this you can do the following:

- Make an image of your OS using Drive Image etc.

- make sure you have access to the RAID controller drivers (via diskette, USB-CD/DVD-ROM, etc.)

- uninstall the RAID controller drivers and reboot. Windows will prompt that it detects a new hardware. Continue without installing the RAID drivers. Now you will not see any optical drive (CDE-ROM, etc.)

- try playing your SF3.7 game. It should start because SF can't detect your IDE drives.


Can you try this? Please post your results.

And don't forget to make an Image (image on HD, booting Drive Image from diskette) or copy the RAID-controller drivers to HD.

Greetings
Alexander

[Insane5000]

I found a better Way!

I only have to deactivate the Raidcontroller in the System Manager(the optical IDE Drives are gone after that) and the Game work.

[Underheaven]

...

Insane5000, that method doesn't work for most people against StarForce 3.5/3.6.

[Lord Silencer]

I found a better Way!

I only have to deactivate the Raidcontroller in the System Manager(the optical IDE Drives are gone after that) and the Game work.

Hi Insane5000, can you tell me which item exactly I need to disable in System Manager? BTW when disable or enable, do we need to reboot the computer?

[Insane5000]

Look at the Picture,to know what have to be deactivate.