Then there's the changing pattern of hardware. An ever-declining piece of hardware in portable computers (notebooks, ultrabooks, etc.) is the optical (CD/DVD) drive. Moving parts mean extra weight and battery drain, so it makes sense. However, it means that to install a game from disc, you'll need an external optical reader. You don't want to carry this around with you either, which means a no-CD crack is required for on-the-go gaming.
Trackmania Original CRACK NO CD 1
It usually involves first installing the game, them looking for a registry entry, DLL (domain-link library), executable crack file, or a replacement EXE for the original game, or a combination of any of these. The new files are then added to the game directory on the hard disk drive (if any are duplicating existing files, these should be backed up) in order to make the game run without the disc.
Once upon a time, finding No-CD cracks was a dangerous pastime. Online resources were full of NSFW ads, popups and malware risks. Fortunately, things have been tidied up somewhat as trends have developed. While there is scant use for no-CD cracks on modern games, some sites still offer them for older games.
Patches, fixes, trainers (offering unlimited health/ammo/etc) and No-CD/No-DVD cracks are available here, although the focus has shifted in recent years to trainers. A useful search tool on the right, however, will let you browse the site for older games available on optical disc, and any associated No-CD patches and EXEs.
The similarly-named GameBurnWorld, meanwhile, tends to focus almost exclusively on trainers, but if you go digging you should find No-CD and No-DVD patches for older titles. Also available here are mini-tutorials and utilities to help you to create copies of your game media. This can be a useful alternative to using the original discs.
What do you think? Is this a good development, or does it strip games of their cultural importance when physical art cannot be admired as part of the experience? Do you use No-CD cracks, or have you abandoned them for Steam and other solutions? Tell us in the comments.
StarForce 3.0 drivers are installed with certain older game demos, freeware, and downloadable games, like TrackMania Nations. Their presence is intended to prevent crackers from using demo executables to help break retail executables (as the two will usually be quite similar).
On March 5, 2006, a StarForce employee publicly posted a working link[16] to a BitTorrent search engine listing of Galactic Civilizations II torrents during a discussion about the popularity of the game. Their action was publicized on various websites, including Digg, Neowin,[17] and Penny Arcade.[18] Stardock also posted an article,[19] partially in response to inaccurate reporting of their own reasons for releasing the game without copy protection. Starforce later closed the thread, posting an apology and stating that the employee "just wanted to show that every non-protected game can be cracked".[17]
SpeedWarrior here once again.Another game -which i was able and fortunate to source a physical copy, like several others in my growing collection BTW- that was maligned with the #Starfuss "virus" was the original Colin McRae DiRT. Fortunately enough, I was able to source the required update patches -up to v1.22 AKA "StarForce Removal Pack", that is- so to make such a great rallying simulator more enjoyable on modern versions of Windows
I believe all forms of sophisticated disc based DRM schemes (SafeDisc/SecureROM/StarForce etc.) will have troubles with Wine. Unless they were replaced with online-based DRM or completely alleviated by later patches/re-releases or cracked non-legitimately by underworld fans/hackers, there is no way to play them otherwise. StarForce claimed to be "un-crack-able" compared to SafeDisc/SecureROM
mirh, have you actually managed to run any of the SF titles with Wine?AFAIK the demos have no need to access hardware such as CD-ROM directly, would that be what you meant by "purely software"?I guess SF was used in demos just to make the comparison with the retail version (and thus cracking) more difficult.
AFAIK all starforce flavours run in ring 0. If any there are different versions that are more or less finicky, and more or less aware of the internals of newer windows. Then, I haven't tested it myself, but from chaos theory to trackmania nations people looked good to me (even though I wasn't expecting the thing to still have some edges to smooth) 2ff7e9595c
Comments