90 replies to this topic

[Unkind]

Ok, today someone created first working mini-image of starforce-protected game Soldiers : Heroes of World War II. Supposedly from the source someone chinese... Starforce base version there is 3.3.36.1, when updated with latest patch - some 3.3.37.2... Those high versions are known to blacklist dtools/alcohol image drives... So i set out to investigate. Some interesting things seem to be discovered:
1. Starforce never even bothers to check toc, if there's data at all on the cd, atip.
2. Seems like blacklisting was done by checking if specific data is at the same time read from hdd when checking process is taking place. Ofcourse image file was at the same time read when vitual cd was checked - thus it never actually _specifically_ blacklisted alcohol/dt virtual drives, it was a very general blacklist... The fact that images mounted over lan passed cd-checks also fits well into this theory...
3. Starforce checks very very limited area of cd to get it's dpm and if dpm seems alrigh it doesn't ever bother to go farther. So seems like starforce developers felt overly safe having their low-level access drivers and thinking not even some MOST primitive checking is needed except dpm...
Maybe all my presumptions are crap wrong and it's just some strange bug produced by removing all files.
So here's what you do to get SHOWWII working:
Make image with starforce 1/2/3 profile, get dpm at low speed. Run your favourite iso editing software Ultraiso/Winiso etc. I used ultraiso. Now delete all files from the image. Click save as, save as bin. For reference, the resulting file size should be 68 208 bytes. Trash the cue. Now get original mds, rename the bin to original mdf. Now you have a mini image that's sufficient to make starforce happy consisting of original mds and mdf with all files removed... So starforce won't see that specific date deing read from hdd at the same time... Now do the usual stuff - unplug physically/disable in bios all ide cd/dvd devices, mount the image on alcohol/dtools virtual drive and it'll work.

I hope if Andareed reads my pm the need to unplug/disable cd/dvd devices might soon be a thing of past also

Results of this method being tested with Kill Switch, Beyond Divinity, Codename : Panzers are also highly anticipated... With Toca Race Driver this might be more difficult to try and impossible with alcohol atm cause it's dvd...

[Andareed]

I got your PM and forwarded it to the Dev Team.

[mulderfox]

Mmm.. kinda problematic.. disabling all the cd/dvd drives in my system in order to play ONE game??? wtf?

Content removed by zamiel. We don't support such activities as those you mentioned.

[jcei]

Great news.

Now have to figure out why we have to unplug IDE drives and how to bypass this..

[tommynt]

Could you specify how it works to let it run in the virtuel drive without other drives

I made a image with alcohol and the default Starforce1/2/3 settings
When I now try to run the game it checks protection up to 3 minutes just to tell me then that there is a "key error"
It want my to retype my CD-key, but I got the right (real and legaly owned) CD key

I got Lite on burner

[Unkind]

Obviously you never did what's written in the first post.

(real and legaly owned) CD key

starforce uses the same key for every region where game is published, i.e. North America, Europe etc. So that's not really your personal key, far from personal, lol. And that's not cd-key. Cd-key and starforce activation key are different things. Btw publishers of some games protected with starforce became so overly confident in it as to actually not use cd-key protection at all. So when starforce finally was bypassed pirates rushed to play to official servers, roflmao.

When I now try to run the game it checks protection up to 3 minutes

That tells you atleast did something of what was written there, i.e. unplugged/disabled real ide drives, otherwise it'd tell you no disc found...
Now go ahead to editing the mdf file and stripping the image of all files. And tell us what game are you trying it with atleast.

Added:
Just got confirmation this is working with Beyond Divinity also.
So so far confirmed titles on which this trick works:
Soldiers : Heroes of World War II
Codename Panzers : Phase One
Beyond Divinity
Remember you have to create such stripped image separately for every title - you can't strip SHOWWII image of all files, then just change the label and use it with Beyond Divinity.

Edited by Unkind, 10 August 2004 - 08:52 PM.

[tommynt]

Sry, but I don´t get it, I wana get a working image of SHOWWII

I did get the mds and mdf files, do I have to give them a specific name? (the name the orginal CD1 does also have?)

Now I m trying to edit the mdf file (does only work with UltraIso; in WINISO I can´t say safe as bin, just as iso)

I delete absolutly all files and save as bin, got the 64.000 as you say and a cue

but the next step I didn´t get

I shall "get the mds file", what means get mds files

I think I somehow need a any mdf file again (I backuped the old one)

when I mount the mds file in alcohol it just says no CD found no check at all

Again, when I mount my originaly made mds + mdf the protection checks goes through the first3 of 4 steps and says after 3 rd one wrong key, please type key ...

I got rid of my CD ROM and even disabled clone cd drive

[Jito463]

If you read the post carefully, he said take the bin file you created and rename it to the same name as the original MDF file.

[tommynt]

The last answer didn´t really help. I am no dumb! I am able to read!

But I don´t know how to rename a bin file to a mdf file

If I give the bin file just the same name as the mds file I can´t open the mds file in alcohol (can´t mount) I says "No Zugriff" in english: not allowed(possible) to open file

[KWoo]

when i rename the stripped bin to mdf and try to mount it with the original mds, it says "invalid imagefile". (i have both files called cd3.mds and cd3.mdf).

what could be the problem? if i use the mds with the original mdf i can mount it..

[Unkind]

But I don´t know how to rename a bin file to a mdf file

That means you don't know the basics i.e. how to change a file extension. Oh well. In windows explorer click tools, folder options, uncheck "hide extensions for known file types". Then you'll be able to rename bin to mdf, getting a warning though. Then place the stripped bin renamed to mdf to separate folder. Place a copy of original mds file there. Give them the same name, keeping the extensions. Mount the resulting dummy image.

when i rename the stripped bin to mdf and try to mount it with the original mds, it says "invalid imagefile". (i have both files called cd3.mds and cd3.mdf).
what could be the problem? if i use the mds with the original mdf i can mount it..

That means you screwed something up probably. What game are you trying it with? Do you just creat an empty bin? You should empty an existing image, not just make new empty image from scratch.

Btw with Toca Race Driver 2 it seems like a big problem. Not only it seems like Alcohol doesn't support extracting dpm from dvds, but also seems like alcohol virtual drives don't support emulating dvd topology. As it seems blindwrite blindread images with topology and blindwrite 5 images with topology are not supported, and it doesn't seem like alcohol liked homebrew mds i made from bwa also saying illegal image... So probably backing up Toca Race Driver 2 won't be possible yet even with these newfound methods. Unless someone'd try to strip dvd topology info past normal cd capacity, maybe that'd be enough with stripped image method, but that requires deep knowledge of mds internal structure.

[tommynt]

WORKED, thanks
Does the same method work with Coden Panzers?
Will I be able to play online with just the image mounted?

[Unkind]

Yes and yes - mounted image doesn't differ from cd in the drive in aspect of online play any way unlike illegal means that may prevent online play themselves even if you have valid cd-key.

[Bossman]

Ok, so far i've played Beyond Divinity and it worked like a charm ... i'm gonna try Soldiers of WW2 later today ... but the fact that you have to unplug all the optical devices totally sucks ... hope you guys find a fix for this ...

Edited by Bossman, 13 August 2004 - 05:07 PM.

[shawn_nee]

Sheesh you would think just being able to play off the HDD would be good....... Instead of physically unplugging the drives you can try to turn them off at start up in the BIOS. Just a thought try it out and see what you get.

[Bossman]

Instead of physically unplugging the drives you can try to turn them off at start up in the BIOS. Just a thought try it out and see what you get.

Yeah, i though of that too, but it doesn't work ... if you don't unplug the optical drives, the game won't start

[StreetStock]

Glad to hear you guys are making progress on this SF bull. Instead of physically unplugging the IDE cables. Have you tried to just disable the secondary IDE controller in BIOS? I'm working with TOCA 2 mounted and I can't get past the disk key check. But without the IDE controller disabled I get a no disk found error. So I'm guessing that you might just get by disabling the controller, not just the drives in the BIOS.

[free spirit]

finally got round to testing this.

works great with I-ninja (starforce3(3.3.33.06)). going to test "X2 - the threat" next (no idea what 1.4 patch is, patch 1.3 is starforce 3.3.33.08).

oh and i haven't used the disconnect all drives method for a while, i find turning off the IDE channel in the bios works fine (not in individual drives, that don't work), and i use UltraISO for my conversion purposes)

Edited by free spirit, 16 August 2004 - 08:18 AM.

[free spirit]

ok tried it with X2 patched up to version 1.4 it has a starforce version of 3.3.37.2. it did not work.

it would not authenticate the disc and it would not authenticate I-ninja with the updated drivers. removing the updated drivers did not help. I-ninja still would not work, even though it reinstalled its own older drivers. conclusion it leaves some info i am still looking for.

1 quick roll back of system to before X2 install (i.e. the starforce 3.3.37.2 drivers) and I-ninja is working fine..................

[Unkind]

You don't need to roll-back system to get rid of newer drivers, use sfclean official starforce removal utility http://help.starforc...ean/sfclean.exe
That's a specific of how starforce works, if it's 3.3.37.2 then they didn't update the protection on the game itself, probably just updated drivers prosync, sfhlp, prohlp, prodrv etc to blacklist this method. And if games protected with older starforce drivers find newer drivers versions they'll use that... So that way say you have a quite old sf-protected game with quite some time passed since last update and no further updates planned... Blacklists of that sf version are long-fixed. Now you install a new game or update a new game which updates drivers... And you can't play old game backup anymore.

1 interesting moment is if you really used sfclean or removed all sf drivers by hand properly and still only system restore worked, then it's a new very intrusive approach for sf devs, alas widely utilised generally. As far as i remember upto this newest updates with starforce it's always been possible to completely remove it, FULLY revert to older driver easily.