How to get rid of SecuRom, NOW

[Knukleur]

John Riccitiello feels your pain?

http://www.edge-online.com/news/riccitiello-says-drm-a-minority-controversy

[spinningplates]

Sorry if I'm making someone be redundant; I scanned through and thought I found my answer but now I can't find it again...SO: I have EPs up through SEA. If I buy FT, install it, and run it with a no-CD patch, then I don't get securom. I also understand that I can install FT, install the patch, and run a patched no-CD crack.  But I am unsure if installing the patch will also install securom.

Thanks for your patience.

[Mootilda]

Sorry if I'm making someone be redundant; I scanned through and thought I found my answer but now I can't find it again...SO: I have EPs up through SEA. If I buy FT, install it, and run it with a no-CD patch, then I don't get securom. I also understand that I can install FT, install the patch, and run a patched no-CD crack.  But I am unsure if installing the patch will also install securom.

If you install using an administrator account, and if you do not actually run the game or the launcher, then you should not get securom.

I just installed all of my EPs and SPs on a new machine.  After installing and patching each one, I replaced the EXE with the patched no-cd and changed the game shortcuts to point to the no-cd.  When I was all done, I checked for SecuROM and it was not on my machine.

[spinningplates]

Thank you, Mootilda!

[wolfskies]

Well, I have two related problems.

1) I have Sims and expansions up to FT. I found SecuRom on my PC, and tried to follow the directions to get rid of it. The only thing I can find is the registry keys, not any folder. The first step with the DLL file didn't show anything. I searched my registry and didn't find any null files.

My game on my PC won't load a house now, it just crashes, and I am unsure if just deleting the registry keys will take care of the problem. I am running Sims on Windows XP on the Administrator account on my desktop.

Anyway, I got frustrated and installed it on my laptop and used the No CD Crack... on to problem 2.

2) The CD Crack for FT works fine except one thing. I can't use the CTRL-SHIFT-C anymore! I type the keys and it don't work! I checked my computer to see if any hot keys were assigned to that function but didn't find any. I am running Windows Vista Premium on my Laptop.

Any ideas? I have tried all the downloads at GameCopyWorld and all of them work, but none allow me to pull up the cheat window.

WS

[witch]

Apparently there are several other programs, particularly on a laptop, which use that combination of keys. If you figure out which one, disable or change the keys the program wants and you regain control of Ctrl Shift C for the sims.

[wolfskies]

Apparently there are several other programs, particularly on a laptop, which use that combination of keys. If you figure out which one, disable or change the keys the program wants and you regain control of Ctrl Shift C for the sims.

Well, I have looked and looked. Funny thing is, nothing opens when I press the keys outside the game. Shouldn't it load something if the keys are pressed? I have a program on my desktop that had that problem. It loaded Trillian. I don't have that installed on my laptop yet, or I would be looking at it for that. I guess I will just have to keep opening every program on my laptop and see if it has those keys listed. Joy!

WS

[witch]

Do a search here, I'm sure I've read of just this problem recently but also some time before that. I didn't pay much attention because I didn't have the problem, but I have an idea it was things that are specific to laptops, like power saving programs or whatever.

[wolfskies]

Do a search here, I'm sure I've read of just this problem recently but also some time before that. I didn't pay much attention because I didn't have the problem, but I have an idea it was things that are specific to laptops, like power saving programs or whatever.

I found it. I did a couple of searches on the internet and found that HP Health Check has that set as their short cut key. Then I just had to do a search for the program and change the properties to none. Thank GOD! It was so sucky having to play with no money cheat.

Thanks for your help!

WS

[Marhis]

Great, I've found it, at last on the Mac. I'm almost sure it installed with Spore demo.
It's concealed in a system plist (you need a plist editor to check), hidden as well (it's a dot-something). In mine it's .GlobalPreferences.plist, in /Users/<yourloginname>/Library/Preferences.  This plist stores some Finder prefs, like iTools username, # of recent documents to list, and so on.

Proof:


Now: does somebody know what do I need to do? Deleting those entries in plist is enough or have I to perform additional stuff?

[seelindarun]

Great mac-fu!  I have no idea if it would be enough to delete those entries; I didn't install Spore onto any macs, and I'm a little dubious about doing so in order to experiment with you on this.   However, I'd love to know how this turns out.

[patzi]

Ok, I downloaded regdelnull and typed in the command and got an error.  So I downloaded devlin, browsed to the appropriate place; no securom was found.  So I did a search of my entire C drive for securom:  NOTHING!  However it is in the registry.  Can I delete the registry keys?

[Callista]

I'm using a  no-CD for Pets, because SecuROM came with Sims 2 Deluxe (base game/NL). I have Uni and Pets now. I'm about to install Seasons and OFB EPs. Should I do anything other than installing the new EPs? I'm guessing that this will make Seasons my latest EP, meaning I should be using a no-CD for that one, rather than for Pets; so I guess that means changing the Pets no-CD back to the regular file, right?

[tunaisafish]

Yes - install the no-cd for your latest ep
No - the old pets .exe file does not need replacing back to the original.

[ScorpioMaurus]

In the thread here :
http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php?PHPSESSID=d170b4c761611f7417f3f256e1e36aee&topic=9929.0
They suggest getting your NoCD crack from GameCopyWorld.com but I would recommend GameBurnWorld or Megagames because for the last few months every time I visit Gamecopyworld I get hit with a virus or Drive by download. I thought people should know because it's one of those that installs as a fake AntiVirus such as AntiVirusXP or VirusLab2009 and then gives you warning about your PC having a virus. It takes quite a bit of time to get rid of and this latest one forced a complete reformat because it stopped AVG from being able to download updates and changes something in the search so that when you try to download any new AntiSpy or AntiVirus it will redirect you to porn sites or software sites and not let you see site's like Kaspersky, AVG, or Spybot ETC.  I don't even know how to contact GameCopyWorld to find out if they know about it because I can't access the site without being hit. I don't know if it's like Securom where GameCopyWorld is aware and doesn't care because it sponsers their site or it they were hacked and that's what's causing it. Until this last time I was able to remove it by using SmitFraudFix in safe mode but I don't know what happened yesterday morning. I was not able to remove it completely but it seems to be many viruses all in one Bratsk, Renos, SmitFraud, VirusLab2009. So Anyways please be careful people.

[Marhis]

Update on the Mac issue; thanks to skygirl22 (nanacake on this forum), apparently SecuROM comes also with Pets EP.
In the end, I deleted those entries in plist, and that seems to not harm anything, since I didn't experienced any malfunctioning so far, but I of course don't know if that was enough to get rid of SecuROM - they're DATA entries, i.e. contains binary data, but really don't know.

More interesting informations and tips in this thread on MTS2 (thanks again nanacake).

[pbox]

A .plist is just a preference (settings) .. that is why I'm so unsure (on the mts2 thread) if SecuRom is being installed at all with Pets/OSX. I wasn't able to find any other evidence than this one plist entry, which doesn't mean there is nothing, but: when the Spore install of Securom is plainly visible for everyone, is it reasonable to assume that it would be *this* undercover with Pets? Invisible in the logs, in the Finder, in Search, in ActivityMonitor?

It is *still* strange, and annoying, that a game install is fumbling with my global settings. This is *my* machine, for fuck's sake.

[Mootilda]

It is *still* strange, and annoying, that a game install is fumbling with my global settings. This is *my* machine, for fuck's sake.

Unfortunately, EA and Sony believe that it is *their* machine, to do with as they wish.  They have more lobbyists than you do, so they might even convince some governments to make it law:  if you install TS2 or Spore or TS3, the machine is theirs!

Of course, this is one of the reasons that many of us are so angry at EA.  Angry enough that some people are actually hoping that EA will fail (ie, go bankrupt; stop making games).

[pbox]

I believe sooner or later they'll shoot themselves in the foot in the same way the music industry has =/ not sure whether that's a good thing or not.

Apart from that: you don't know OSX, Mootilda, do you? I don't really know whether or not it is possible for a process to run without showing up in Activity Monitor .. I'd be happy for a competent opinion on that.

ETA: I just had the genius idea to simply email Aspyr and ask what kind of business they have in my global prefs .. but, er, WTF? "Support" = a phone number in the US? And a PO box

Cute.

[jolrei]

So I did a search of my entire C drive for securom:  NOTHING!  However it is in the registry.  Can I delete the registry keys?

It is not unheard of that securom will install in registry, but not on the drive.  You do want to get rid of the securom registry keys.

[Mootilda]

Apart from that: you don't know OSX, Mootilda, do you?

No, I'm sorry.  I don't know much about MACs.

[Marhis]

Well, Mac OS X = Unix, and as far as I can tell (not a sysadmin myself) rootkits don't show up in activity monitor, (or with top command, if you want to use command line stuff à la Pes).
I have no doubt that a skilled sysadmin would know how to detect bad things at work in its system, but alas, I'm definitely too far from having those skills :/.

[seelindarun]

One notable difference between Spore and Pets is that Transgaming declared publicly that they would be using Securom on all their Cider-wrapped games for EA.  There's no question that Spore exposes macs to suckrom, whether you can find the processes for it or not.  The only debate is about how harmful it might be, but I've seen exactly one post by the same guy linked a dozen times, and no one else. 

Aspyr anyway has never said they use suckrom on TS2 or any EPs.  They do put it on some games, and have said so.  It's hard to believe that they would only be coy about TS2.  I'm inclined to think that the .plist entries for Pets EP is just leftover junk from the port.  At the time Pets was released for OS X, Seasons had yet to be released for PC, and EA itself did not add suckrom until BV.
I'm still going to edit my .plist though.

[Simsample]

Well, Mac OS X = Unix, and as far as I can tell (not a sysadmin myself) rootkits don't show up in activity monitor, (or with top command, if you want to use command line stuff à la Pes).
I have no doubt that a skilled sysadmin would know how to detect bad things at work in its system, but alas, I'm definitely too far from having those skills :/.

Have you tried 'OSX Rootkit Hunter'? Link and details here:
http://theappleblog.com/2008/01/23/why-mac-security-matters-os-x-rootkit-hunter/

[Marhis]

Yes, thanks Simsample, I tried that one, but apparently it didn't find anything on my mac.
I hope that deleting those SecuROM entries in plist did the trick, so far I haven't experienced any malfunctioning... (crosses fingers)