I at the end of my rope for this game...

nintendo_nerd · Post by **nintendo_nerd** » Wed Nov 11, 2009 1:25 am

So, a few months ago, I made a thread similar to the one I'm making right now, and it...didn't turn out too well.... So, the past few days, I've spent the who-knows-how-many hours on the internet searching for a solution, and all I've seen were essentially the same things over and over again. You all know it to be the evil Starforce protection (many game companies now have severed ties). So, most forums I went to would either say A, "make sure you unplug all IDE drives or use Starforce Nightmare and turn them off and create a miniISO for Daemon Tools/Alcohol 120" or B, "Go to the starforce website and update it to the latest driver and make sure you install Splinter Cell or whatever game you're using to the latest version!" Okay, I have done all the above, and after several reboot prompts (which the starforce update requires), nothing. I also made the alleged miniISO files and ran them off Daemon Tools/Alcohol 120....nothing there, either. The pattern never changes; so, when I put Splinter Cell Chaos Theory in to my DVD-ROM, it comes up with the same "click restart to update starforce to the most recent driver". I reboot only to have the same message haunt me. What also confuses me is the fact that people have had the same issue as me and followed the exact same steps and they have their game running perfectly on Windows 7. It's not my intent to piss anyone off or come across as annoying, but man is this issue weird. DRM should be illegal.

Edit: And yes, I know I spelled "I'm" and "I"

funkyass · Post by **funkyass** » Wed Nov 11, 2009 2:00 am

Bitch to Ubisoft to remove the starcrap protection.

the main problem is the thing the starshit checks for is part of the OS since Vista.

solution center suggests I could download an updated driver, but im on x64, so that aint gonna work I think.

could always run an XP partition.

In short: Chaos Theory and Double Agent in Win7? Im 95% certain that they will never work.

The versions on Steam may work; but fuck that shit. Fuck starforce.

sweener2001 · Post by **sweener2001** » Wed Nov 11, 2009 2:51 am

you've given them your money.

pirate it and you'll have a working copy.

funkyass · Post by **funkyass** » Wed Nov 11, 2009 5:04 am

sweener2001 wrote:you've given them your money.

pirate it and you'll have a working copy.

I can't find a good hack for it.

nintendo_nerd · Post by **nintendo_nerd** » Wed Nov 11, 2009 5:14 am

funkyass wrote:
sweener2001 wrote:you've given them your money.

pirate it and you'll have a working copy.
I can't find a good hack for it.

I only paid eight bucks for it on amazon, but the fact that they haven't developed a decent hack for it makes it that much more of a pain...Looks like I have no choice but to take advantage of dual booting. Starforce driver updates are as useless as Windows ME as far as I'm concerned. I theoretically could get a torrent of the game, but there are problems with that: one, I run the risk of getting caught and charged a hefty fine and two, I run the risk of getting viruses/malware/spyware on my computer. At one point, I did have a version that worked on Windows 7 RC1 (albeit a heavily hacked version that didn't have FMVs) and I still remember the pseudonym of the hacker who uploaded it.

creaothceann · Post by **creaothceann** » Wed Nov 11, 2009 11:17 pm

nintendo_nerd wrote:Looks like I have no choice but to take advantage of dual booting.

Or a virtual machine.

nintendo_nerd · Post by **nintendo_nerd** » Wed Nov 11, 2009 11:25 pm

creaothceann wrote:
nintendo_nerd wrote:Looks like I have no choice but to take advantage of dual booting.
Or a virtual machine.

3D games don't work on virtual machines, much less something as graphically complex as Chaos Theory. Then again, I've been wrong before... Can you suggest any good ones?

creaothceann · Post by **creaothceann** » Wed Nov 11, 2009 11:40 pm

VirtualBox, it has support for hardware virtualization and 3D acceleration (link).

Win7 has a virtual machine ("XP mode") via Virtual PC, but I don't know about its features.

I.S.T. · Post by **I.S.T.** » Wed Nov 11, 2009 11:44 pm

It doesn't really have that capability...

nintendo_nerd · Post by **nintendo_nerd** » Thu Nov 12, 2009 12:08 am

creaothceann wrote:VirtualBox, it has support for hardware virtualization and 3D acceleration (link).

Win7 has a virtual machine ("XP mode") via Virtual PC, but I don't know about its features.

XP Mode has no 3D acceleration whatsoever. Virtual Box has Direct X 8/9 and OpenGL support (both have Pixel Shader 2.0), and you can dedicate 128MB of RAM to the video card. How reliable it is, I don't know. Maybe I can finally get correct lighting on Pandora Tomorrow.

franpa · Post by **franpa** » Thu Nov 12, 2009 12:32 am

VMWare now supports has direct x 8, 9, 10 and pixel shader 2.0 and 3.0 too.

nintendo_nerd · Post by **nintendo_nerd** » Thu Nov 12, 2009 12:46 am

franpa wrote:VMWare now supports has direct x 8, 9, 10 and pixel shader 2.0 and 3.0 too.

But that stuff's expensive. So, WinXP runs quite well on Virtual Box, the only issue now is that it can't find the Guest Additions....o_0

kode54 · Post by **kode54** » Thu Nov 12, 2009 2:05 am

Actually, the latest VMware Player can create virtual machines, the only real limitations would seem to be the lack of snapshot support, as well as only being able to run a single virtual machine at a time. (I think.)

The 3D support is probably better than VirtualBox, which has some bugs in its 3D acceleration implementation. For instance, some D3D/OpenGL windows will render their contents over top of overlapping windows within the guest operating system. The problem has been reported for both Windows guests and Linux guests.

nintendo_nerd · Post by **nintendo_nerd** » Thu Nov 12, 2009 2:25 am

Are there any versions of VMware that are free? I do have XP on another computer (with an older video card), but whatever.

Post by **odditude** » Thu Nov 12, 2009 2:32 am

kode54 wrote:VMware Player

nintendo_nerd · Post by **nintendo_nerd** » Thu Nov 12, 2009 2:37 am

So, I want to download, and it asks me to register my company (i.e. put in the information for the company/place I work for). The thing of it is, I'm currently unemployed, so, I'm pretty much SOLed, right?

creaothceann · Post by **creaothceann** » Thu Nov 12, 2009 2:38 am

nintendo_nerd:
Guest Additions are included with VirtualBox. Boot the virtual WinXP, then in VirtualBox mount the file "VBoxGuestAdditions.iso" that is in VirtualBox's directory. That should start the process if you have Autorun enabled.

nintendo_nerd · Post by **nintendo_nerd** » Thu Nov 12, 2009 2:40 am

creaothceann wrote:nintendo_nerd:
Tey're included with VirtualBox. Bot the virtual WinXP, then in VirtualBox mount the file "VBoxGuestAdditions.iso" that is in VirtualBox's directory. That should start the process if you have Autorun enabled.

I know that, but I get an error telling me it can't mount the image, and when I go to "mount image" it's not there. Maybe I'll give VMWare a shot (assume I can download it without registering a company/job I don't have).

creaothceann · Post by **creaothceann** » Thu Nov 12, 2009 2:52 am

Did you mount it like this?

adventure_of_link · Post by **adventure_of_link** » Thu Nov 12, 2009 3:12 am

nintendo_nerd wrote:So, I want to download, and it asks me to register my company (i.e. put in the information for the company/place I work for). The thing of it is, I'm currently unemployed, so, I'm pretty much SOLed, right?

just put fake information into the boxes (with the exclusion of a REAL e-mail IIRC)

on another note, is VMware server still free? I've used that for the longest of time.

nintendo_nerd · Post by **nintendo_nerd** » Thu Nov 12, 2009 3:17 am

Alright, I managed to download it and now I'm installing it. Is the 3D acceleration good enough to support older games (i.e circa 2003/2004) such as the original Splinter Cell?

snkcube · Post by **snkcube** » Thu Nov 12, 2009 3:37 am

There's only one way to find out. Test it out yourself.

nintendo_nerd · Post by **nintendo_nerd** » Thu Nov 12, 2009 4:02 am

Currently installing the game...So far, VMWare seems to be infinitely smoother and faster than XP mode ever was.

Edit 8:21PM: Impressively, the game does load (and runs at 60FPS with full audio) but many of the graphics are missing and lighting seems to be nonexistent. Next, I will try Chaos Theory. Is there anything that can be about the graphics drivers?

franpa · Post by **franpa** » Thu Nov 12, 2009 5:18 am

nintendo_nerd · Post by **nintendo_nerd** » Thu Nov 12, 2009 5:20 am

I figured as much. Oh,well. So much for finding a loophole for running older software.