How to get rid of SecuRom, NOW
JCSpencer:
Quote from: max_the_repairman on 2007 October 14, 04:33:11
Ah, cassette tape drives - when volume control could screw up your entire save process.
LOL! Ah I miss my old TI.
You know, I actually can't help but wonder if the CD burner problems I've been experiencing have really been related to this SecuROM crap. I wrote it off as normal misbehavior, but now I'm not so sure. It didn't give me too much trouble until about 4 or 5 months ago. I thought maybe I had just overused it. But it just so happens I installed The Sims 2 then. Before that, I was using my friend's copy, but when she took it back I had to buy my own. And guess what? I bought Deluxe, one of the SecuROM carriers. Unwittingly.
Now I also wondered, "If Deluxe had SecuROM, why is it only now becoming a problem?" That thought contributed to my suspicion that most of the people (not all) were misdiagnosing their problems. But then it occurred to me that not many people had bought Sims 2 Deluxe, but Bon Voyage, the first non-repeated EP to be released with SecuROM - the majority of the players grabbed that one. Thus, it suddenly seems to appear, even though it's technically been floating around for over a year.
And my writing this off as normal wear and tear makes me wonder something else. How many people out there are doing the same thing? Writing off SecuROM problems as something else? EA claims it can't be SecuROM based mostly on the fact they've received few actual complaints (they say 41 phone calls and around 1000 BBS posters, as of a few days ago). They call that few, but they also say they've sold 100,000 copies. That's a 1:100 problem ratio, which should be unacceptable to most companies - sure would be in the car industry (however, I argue that the numbers their using are inaccurately evaluated; I think it's closer to 1:30 and that's probably too high as well).
J. M. Pescado:
Deluxe not exhibiting problems would simply be because if you have a more advanced expansion pack, its executables are used instead of the more primitive ones. Therefore, it never becomes a factor. Same reason why H&M and Celebrations(?) which had it, also didn't become issues, because their executables are not used.
muridae:
Quote from: JCSpencer
You know, I actually can't help but wonder if the CD burner problems I've been experiencing have really been related to this SecuROM crap. I wrote it off as normal misbehavior, but now I'm not so sure.
My laptop's DVD burner started playing up round about Christmas last year, at which point it was about 8 months old and hadn't been heavily used. I wrote it off to crappy hardware at the time, but the problems all started at around the time I installed Neverwinter Nights 2. So I've now checked, and yes, there are SecuROM services and registry entries, and the datestamps match up to when I patched NWN2. And I use Nero to burn DVDs, which would also be a factor. So it's taken 9-10 months for me to start wondering whether there could be a connection between me installing a game and the DVD drive playing up.
To be fair, it could still just be crappy device drivers and nothing to do with NWN2's SecuROM. But when I can find time I'll do a complete rebuild of the machine and not put any games back on it. In the meantime I'm trying to keep my desktop machine clean, so that I can at least burn DVDs somewhere.
I do wonder how extensive a range of hardware it's been tested with. I have a SATA DVD burner in my desktop machine, and that's definitely caused me compatibility issues with a couple of pieces of software before they got patched, because they were expecting an IDE drive. It's a Lightscribe drive too; heaven only knows if that confuses the issue.
Quote from: JCSpencer
But then it occurred to me that not many people had bought Sims 2 Deluxe, but Bon Voyage, the first non-repeated EP to be released with SecuROM - the majority of the players grabbed that one. Thus, it suddenly seems to appear, even though it's technically been floating around for over a year.
There have also been other choices for latecomers to the game to buy, other than Deluxe. In the UK we've certainly had a Base Game + Pets bundle, and a "Festive Edition" which bundled the base game and the holiday stuff pack, and I still see them on the shelves from time to time. Deluxe was released 2 months later over here, so only came out 2 months before Bon Voyage. So those regional differences whittle down the numbers who might have got problems from it still further, even before you factor in combining it with later EPs and SPs.
Also, for some people, Bon Voyage displays quite noticeable lag problems just trying to load the game, with stuttering audio/video at the neighbourhood chooser and during the initial neighbourhood load. That's an immediate giveaway clue that there's something slightly wrong; if the earlier games with SecuROM on loaded smoothly their owners would have had no real reason to look deeply into what the game was doing on their PC.
JCSpencer:
Thanks for the clarification, JM. That didn't occur to me, but I guess it's why I my problems have been so small and intermittent. I acquired EPs pretty soon after Deluxe, so I stopped using that disc.
muridae, I have pretty much the same bizarre happenings as you denote. I also use Nero and Sonic, and further my system (laptop) is an HP, which I heard someone say was also causing conflicts (although I've heard several reports about peope having problems even with Sony equipment). But I'm also hard on my computers. I usually end up replacing them every 18 months or so, sometimes more frequently. Not from abuse mind you (that's reserved for my separate keyboard and mouse). I just overuse the hell out of them and they are almost never shutdown, other than for the few seconds before restarting them. So I'm used to things acting up over time; but the computer was still pretty new when I had the burner issues. However, after seeing stories like yours and mine, where it's easy to see how we can *think* it's something else, I wonder, if you have hundreds of people that are thinking "nah, it's not SecuROM, it's something else," then there seems to be an uncomfortable pattern. Some are doing this just because they don't want to jump on the bandwagon out of ignorance and point the finger at EA, but how many of us are there going to be (people with SecuROM-type problems, but that are looking for other reasons) before we realize - there are way too many coincidences to ignore. That's a rhetorical question, lol, not directing it at you specifically. And what the point of that diatribe was, well... I'm still in the middle of my first cup of coffee?
angelyne:
I wonder if the references to rootkits and security concerns are related to the Sony fiasco some time back. They had decided on a DRM scheme that installed a rootkit on your computer, without your knowledge or consent. And this was music, not even a program.
Rootkits, for those who don't know, are cloaking technologies that hide files, Registry keys, and other system objects from diagnostic. It's like the cloaking devices in Star Trek. It makes you invisible and almost undetectable.
The Sony rootkit was designed to hide any files, registry keys and processes starting with the string $sys$,, IIRC. You can see right away the potential for any hacker to exploit this to run a virus or malware and stay hidden from detection. A fact that escaped no one. In fact it was quickly taken up by some enterprising fellows in an online game who used it to hide cheating software from the scanners installed by the game to detect this type of thing.
To make matter worse, after Sony was called on it, and the controversy grew, this what happened :
Quote
Sony BMG released a software utility to remove the rootkit component of XCP from affected Microsoft Windows computers, but this removal utility was soon analyzed by Russinovich again in his November 5, 2005, blog and revealed as only exacerbating the privacy and security concerns.[12]
In fact, the Sony BMG removal program merely unmasked the hidden files installed by the rootkit, but did not actually remove the rootkit. In addition, this program was reported to install additional software that cannot be uninstalled. In order to download the uninstaller, it is necessary to provide an e-mail address (which the Sony BMG Privacy Policy implies to be added to various bulk e-mail lists), and to install an ActiveX control containing backdoor methods (marked as "safe for scripting", and thus prone to exploits).
So from bad to worse. You can read the story on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_Sony_BMG_CD_copy_protection_scandal and from Russinovich's blog : http://blogs.technet.com/markrussinovich/search.aspx?q=rootkit&p=1 You shoud read the blog. It was like a watching a train wreck. It was funny at the time, but only because I wasn't actually on that train.
That was a FUBAR of monumental proportion and let to several lawsuits. It also set a bad precedent for the software industry.
So, not that I want defend EA, but this is nowhere near as bad as the Sony case. The changes are not hidden, for one. But the Sony case might be why people are mumbling about security issues. It's just a guess on my part.
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