|
|
Post by Keith Heitmann on Mar 18, 2005 3:29:37 GMT -5
I ordered then cancelled my order tonight for Silent Hunter III. Unfortunately, after placing my order on Amazon, I visited the SHIII forum and saw that the game uses Starforce copy protection. I've heard nothing but bad things about it and that the thing is practically impossible to delete from you hard drive once you have it installed. There is a freeware cleaner called Starforce Clean but I would prefer not having to rely on such things.
Besides not being easily removable, there are reports that Starforce inteferes with other programs and games including burning software.
Whether these reports are out of proportion or not, I'm not going to put myself through the experience of finding out for myself. Sorry Ubi Soft, you lost a sale.
|
|
|
|
Galland
Unterscharfuehrer
Resident Gun Nut
Posts: 140
|
Post by Galland on Mar 21, 2005 8:18:47 GMT -5
Crap! I was going to post about SH III if you didn't. Now I don't know if I want to buy it. I hate copy protection schemes that use the boot sector. At one time there was a DOS command that wiped the boot sector. I think it was 'fdisk /mb' but I'm not sure. I'm not sure if XP has it either.
Oh well. Another sale is lost. I don't want to screw up my multiboot OS partitions.
Galland
|
|
|
|
Post by Keith Heitmann on Mar 21, 2005 12:58:22 GMT -5
The is a cleaner from Starforce, so they say, and there is a 3rd party cleaner out for it too. I think I'd just rather not have to deal with it altogether and I told them so on their messageboard.
Too bad. I was kind of in the mood for a new WW2 sub sim. I haven't played one since Aces of the Deep.
|
|
Phil Walker
Scharfuehrer
VERY opinionated. Best stay away from. You've been warned!!!
Posts: 251
|
Post by Phil Walker on Mar 21, 2005 15:17:35 GMT -5
Well Keith,
IF you want one, I know of a place you can get one. It's a group who designs there own, so it's not a name brand, but has been suggested I try them out for myself. It's the "Naval Warfare" group in Oklahoma. I put up a post about it in the gaming section (or should I say reply). NWS Online, so if you look for the link take a look at theirs. Best of luck and hope you find one to your liking!!!
Sincerely,
Phil
|
|
Galland
Unterscharfuehrer
Resident Gun Nut
Posts: 140
|
Post by Galland on Mar 29, 2005 9:42:58 GMT -5
The chickens have come home to roost. Look at this thread on ubi.com regarding various bugs that keep folks from installing their copy of SH3. It is insane. And, apparently, Ubi hasn't released a regular CD-ROM version of the game yet- just DVD. Not only have they prevented an equal number of pirates and legit consumers from obtaining the game; they have prevented numerous DVD drive owners from buying the game. forums.ubi.com/eve/ubb.x?q=Y&a=tpc&s=400102&f=2881085392&m=8631081492&p=1Crazyness. |
|
|
|
Post by Keith Heitmann on Mar 29, 2005 11:48:09 GMT -5
Lots of unhappy people there.
I read something there and checked my own Device Manger for hidden files and found that I had a "device" called Secdrv, which is used by the copy protection program SafeDisk installed. It shows up with the hidden Non-Plug'nPlay devices.
Not only that...I have a copy of Star Force installed! Aargh! I have no idea where this copy it came from. Unless it was from my beta stint with Atari for CivIII: Conquests. Crap. I was hoping to avoid Starforce.
I wonder it has been responsible for some of the strange things that have happened on my system in the past year or so.
|
|
