StarFarce

OK, an odd entry this one. The following text is something I just put on a forum called 'Boycott Starforce'

A long story short - a new DRM copy-protection scheme that uses a Sony-like rootkit to, well, root your PC. Alleged to actually damage CD/DVD drives and HDDS. IT DAMAGED MINE. Yes, Starforce is "Anti-copying malware" to quote numerous other critics.

To add to matters, Starforce is written by some Russian dudes. Anyone who has ever seen 'A Very Peculiar Practice' and 'A Very Polish Practice' will start laughing now, as these Russian guys have a really odd way of dealing with critics. They send lawsuits to them, AS WELL AS accusing critics of software piracy. Their attitude is "If you have problems with our software you must be a pirate, and we are reporting you to the RIAA"

So posting anything on any forum is dangerous. LUCKILY in Australia we have consumer protection laws for this kind of thing, so sue away Russian dudes! Although with the Free Whoring (darn, how do I do strikethrough again?) Trade Agreement we have with the United States of Assholes I might not be so safe....

Click 'read more' to see the whole sad tale...

My system:
Athlon 64 3200
ASRock 939 Dual-Sata2 (latest firmware)
4GB Ram, SB Xfi Platinum, Leadtek PX7800GTX

(yes, I got a bonus at Xmas! :-D )

Drives: 2 x Segate ST3200826A
1 x Asus DRW1608P2 (firmware 1.37)

OS: Windows XP Sp2

So this is a new machine, replacing an Athlon XP with a near-dead DVD drive and failing HDDs. reinstallation of everything was going fine, at this new machine really was quick. WAS quick, up until I installed Ubisoft's Silent Hunter 3. At this point I HAD NEVER HEARD OF STARFORCE. Booting seemed slower, but hey, there was more software on the machine, right? Anyway, it gets to the point where I want to do a backup of my install, and pop a DVD in my nice new drive, and it want to write at 4x max. WTF? This is a 16x drive, and I am using 16x DVDs! It's BRAND NEW! Anyway, backups written. Decide to play SH3. Choppy as hell, took 10 mins to start. One look at SH3 forums says 'make sure you are using latest Startforce drivers' Starforce? What's Starforce? Find Starforce website, DL drivers, install, reboot, still slow. Actually slower - it took my nice new PC nearly 6 minutes to start! When it did start, a SPEEDFAN alarm went off. I have speedfan installed to monitor temps - it gets hot in Australia in summer - and an alarm had gone off for my primary HDD. Funny, it's never overheated... THE ERROR WAS A S.M.A.R.T. SYSTEM FAULT!

MY 3 WEEK OLD HDD HAD ALREADY MAXED OUT ECC ERRORS. THE SECONDARY DRIVE WAS ALSO FAILING WITH THE SAME FAULT.

These were two brand new drives. Ok, sure one drive might fail, but TWO? A quick call to my faithful hardware store to check that I hadn't bought part of a bad batch of drives - nope, no-one else reporting problems.

OK, back to the net, a bit more searching on Starforce found.... this forum. Ah. Looks like Starfarce is the culprit.

However, before I removed it, I did a few tests.

Booting - takes 5mins to boot to desktop and load all autoruns etc.
CD/DVD writing speed - max 4x on both CD & DVD, on a drive that will do x16/x40 ! (note that's averaged speeds, which I checked with Nero Info, which was also picking up LOTS of ECC errors while writing)
HDD to HDD copying speed 400MB file took 6 MINUTES to copy from one HDD to another.

OK, remove Starfarce. This was done by booting in Safe Mode, then removing the drivers manually AS PER STARFORCES INSTRUCTIONS On THEIR WEBSITE. I also cleared out the entries in registry.

Reboot.

Booting was much quicker, around 45 SECONDS to desktop, but there was AN ERROR! "Windows has detected significant changes to your hardware etc'" I needed to re-activate Windows XP! Yeah, I had to do this 3 weeks ago with the new machine... ah. It won't automatically re-activate over the web - IT THINKS I HAVE INSTALLED ON A SECOND MACHINE. A quick phone call to Microsoft sorts that out. I mention what I was doing, too - removing Starforce. "Ah, no it shouldn't do that.." was their reply. "I agree, can you look into it?" was mine!

Other tests -
CD/DVD writing speed - Average DVD write speed x8, average CD write speed X30. Better, not great but better.
Also, NERO now allows me to select speeds higher than x4.
HDD to HDD copying speed 400MB - somewhere around 2-3 SECONDS. Hard to time.

So, here's my lst:

Starforce, in MY EXPERIENCE, WITHOUT A DOUBT:
1. slows down booting, significantly
2. slows down IDE HDD opereations, significantly
3. interferes with operation of CD/DVD drive and Nero, significantly
and here come the biggies:
4. DAMAGES HDD SIGNATURES FORCING RE-ACTIVATION OF WINDOWS
5. CAUSES ECC ERRORS IN HDD S.M.A.R.T. FIRMWARE WHICH CANNOT BE REPAIRED. THIS WILL, IN TIME, CAUSE THE HDD TO STOP OPERATING
Oh! and I nearly forgot...
6. DIRECTLY INTERFERES WITH OTHER SOFTWARE SUCH AS SECUROM. That last one I discovered when I ran Norton Antivirus 2005 - it uses Securom, and also had to be re-activated as well after removing Starforce.

Ok, no, none of this is PHYSICAL damage - nothing caught fire or exploded. The worst part is the SMART firmware damage - that can't be repaired, and I now have brand new drives that 'think' they are damaged. They might be fine, but their SMART firmware now shows their overall drive 'fitness' (as measured by Speedfan) to be about 47% for the primary and 50% for the secondary. THAT'S WHERE THE REPORTS OF DAMAGE ARE COMING FROM, IN MY OPINION.

I don't know about CD/DVD drives, and whether they have a SMART-like system that records errors - if they do, that's why peoples drives die over time.

Having had all of that happen to my brand new PC, I had a look at my old one - both older HDDs SMART systems reported totally failing drives, Speedfan reports 'fitness' of 0% for each drive. The older CD/DVD, a Sony was as good as dead - it would not read ANY DVD, and had trouble with most CDs - most read errors. It is the first piece of Sony kit I have EVER had fail. Then I noticed - I had X2-The Threat installed. I hadn't played it much, but it had been there for nearly a year, along with STARFORCE. Well, well, well.

When I first read about the Starforce issues, I simply intended to delete the bloody thing and watch out for it in future (You hear this, Ubisoft? that means I WON'T BUY YOUR SOFTWARE!). I had no intention of getting involved in actually writing about it on forums - quite frankly I don't have the time. However when I found out it screwed with OTHER software (including the OS) and their activation systems, I got riled.

So there you go, another sad tale.