How to get rid of SecuRom, NOW
lordrichter:
Quote from: morriganrant on 2007 October 16, 22:55:15
My logs were showing many attempts by Sims2ep6.exe to access the net at start up and during play.
I think that is Sims 2 behavior, not SecuROM. Sims 2 does have the ability to check for patches and connect to the Exchange. I turn that off.
I am continuing to watch this machine as I just use Sims 2 BV normally. Sims 2 and SecuROM have free run of the computer to do as they please. Nothing says they have to phone home every day, if they are so inclined to phone home at all.
morriganrant:
My game has never been set to auto login, I'm aware of the game options. I don't need them to inform me of a patch, I can check that myself. Besides, it's unlikely that I would bother installing an EAxis patch at the moment they announce it, anyway. It would have been one thing if it was just the one attempt, but it was several, over and over.
My guess why, would be that I had installed using a torrented copy. I do have a legal copy but use isos for convenience. I share this computer, it's just easier to have images and no-cd cracks then trusting my significant other to place the cd back in it's box or at least in a place where it will not get damaged.
angelyne:
Quote
SecuROM does hide its files. Not only by making them garden-variety hidden, but by making the file names malformed so that they cannot be removed without additional utilities. Now as for the rest of the rootkit definitition bits, I'm not sure. At best, it's a gray area.
I don't think that's considered to be a rootkit. If you use rootkit revealer (from Microsoft) and do a scan, you might find a couple of instances of keys with imbedded nulls, and they are actually legitimate. One of them hides passwords information, IIRC. A real rootkit hides better that that. A rootkit is invisible from normal detection means. You need a special tool like the rootkit revealer. From reading the Tom's Hardware article Securom makes itself difficult to remove and plays a couple of rather unkosher tricks, but it's not truly hidden, or especially difficult to remove.
But the thing with the process explorer that is just rude! Process explorer is a legitimate application (from Microsoft no less) and no two bit "security" software with delusions of grandeur should interfere with that!.
Again, not that I am defending that stupid piece of crap software, and the even more stupid decision to implement it. Just that I am hearing a lot of terms being bandied about that seems to come from a big muddle combining the Securom mess, the Sony XCP fiasco and malware in general. The XCP WAS a backdoor (the size of a freaking barn), and it WAS a rootkit and it WAS spyware (it phoned home). And you know what else? On top of civil lawsuits, there was even discussion of criminal charges, and homeland security looked into the case. a FUBAR of truly gigantic proportions. Sony was in deep deep doodoo. Would they be so incredibly stupid as to do the exact same thing again?? I know human stupidity knows no bounds but that's a bit much, even for Sony execs.. Unless the lass bunch have all committed hara-kiri. Anyway. The thing is so far, I haven't heard any concrete evidence that Securom is a rootkit, even if it exhibits some rootkit like behavior, I've seen nothing to indicate it's a backdoor, and I've seen nothing to indicate it's spyware. Although it fully fits the definition of malware.
Why does this bug me, and why does it look like I'm defending Securom? I'm not. I don't give a rat's ass about it. It's crap and the sooner it's off your system the better. But there is a lot of misinformation out there on the subject and it's making people panic. And panicked people do panicky things like reformat their drives. And then they come here and complain about loosing everything in the big securom crash of '07. Blah. I don't want to hear that. But seriously. It's probably because I work in tech support, it goes against the grain to see people freak out about their computers and my professional reflexes kick in.
angelyne:
Quote from: jmtmom on 2007 October 16, 23:23:44
Quote from: lordrichter on 2007 October 16, 22:07:38
I do not have McAfee, but my experiments with Symantec Anti Virus 9 shows that it SecuROM is not messing with it and it is working and updating fine.
SecuROM does not disable my firewall sofware, either.
Well my Paid Norton is not working at all. I believe it's SecuRom but I haven't been able to completely get it off my system, that's the only thing that will tell me for sure. I've uninstalled and reinstalled Norton multiple times and followed the instructions they gave me to no avail.
I'm tearing my hair out trying to follow the SecuRom removal instructions posted here. I may give up and reformat, it would be easier and I don't have much to lose on this computer.
What part of the removal process are you having problems with? And what is Norton doing ?
jmtmom:
Quote from: angelyne on 2007 October 17, 01:47:49
What part of the removal process are you having problems with?
I was able to take out the "CAUTION!! NEVER DELETE" key using the DOS command "regdelnull hkcu -s" after quite a bit of stumbling. It hasn't yet worked for the "regdelnull hku -s" command. It says it's scanning, but doesn't show anything. I still have the miles long key/folder in my HKEY_USERS and cannot delete it. I have not been able to get the "uaservice7/remove" command to work either. It's rather ballsy or stupid of me to attempt it as I knew nothing about DOS commands when I began.
Quote from: angelyne on 2007 October 17, 01:47:49
And what is Norton doing ?
My Norton suddenly shut off completely and instructed me to uninstall/reinstall. It gets as far as configuring, then prompts to uninstall/reinstall over and over. I got some instructions from Norton Support, but I found myself unable to access all the files even with an Administrator account. I've used their removal tool, downloaded a fresh copy several times. I think one reason I'm even trying to remove the SecuRom rather than reformatting is to prove to myself that it is the cause of my problems. I am pretty close to giving up though and doing just that.
If it matters, I have a VISTA Ultimate 64 bit system on a 4 month old laptop.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page