Thanks Angelyne
I should have known how to do this, was looking in the wrong place!! Like many people I should spend more time exploring windows instead of waiting until I need to find something.   

 After reading the whole 10 pages of this post 3 times over (I like clarification!) I followed the instructions and have removed SecuRom from my laptop. Have now got a no cd crack and BV runs fine. However, when I rebooted after removing SecuRom windows acted like it was running for the first time, desktop was reset, windows walkthru video wanted to run etc.  As if that wasnt irritating enough when I connected to the internet IE had also been reset and needed initial setup! my homepage was back to msn etc.  As IE was the first thing I noticed any strange behavior in while SecuRom was present I am sure that it has been affected by it in some way but have not seen anyone mention it here so am I wrong?  My laptop is definately running faster again now.  Also my keyboard is now confused, @ and " have changed places which is a total pain when typing my email address...is there any way to put this right?

Thank you for covering this subject, I knew something was on my machine that shouldnt be there as it was not behaving quite right and running slowly, but had not even heard of SecuRom before. I am a sims2 addict but will never buy another expansion if SecuRom is used.