How to play Silent Hunter III without the DVD in the DVD Drive (Starforce free)

[Onkel Neal]

This has been approved by Ubisoft.

How to play Silent Hunter III without the DVD in the DVD Drive (Starforce free).

Later editions of Silent Hunter III come without a Starforce installation, however those who bought the game in its early release life have Starforce included in the game install.

For this reason please find below guidance on removing the Starforce installation from the game allowing you to play without the DVD in the drive.

NOTE: You can still buy the SH3 Gold edition with all the proper patches and Starforce free for $9.99 from the Subsim Store here. It also includes a free copy of Silent Hunter II, the first of the U-boat Silent Hunters.

**************************************

INSTRUCTIONS:

Uninstall Silent Hunter III - this uninstall will not delete Starforce so you will need another program to complete removal. Starforce have an official removal tool which download here. Then follow the steps below:

How to remove all StarForce components from your PC:


Sometimes the un-installation utility of the protected application does not uninstall all StarForce drivers. The following procedure will ensure that all StarForce related components are completely removed from your system.

• Download the StarForce Removal Tool as a ZIP archive.
• Extract and store sfdrvrem.exe anywhere on your hard disk.
• Run sfdrvrem.exe.

If the protected application requires a StarForce driver, this driver will be re-installed as soon as you launch the application again. For further help, please contact the helpdesk of the application publisher.

.

Searching your windows task manager will not find any Starforce programs.

You will need to do a web search for archive rld-sh14.rar or search for Silent hunter 3 v1.4b No DVD/Fixed exe to get the archive. Do not post links in this forum, everyone should know how to use Google.

In the archive you will find 5 data sets (SH3.EXE, MISSIONENGINE.DLL, SIMDATA.DLL, UTILS.DLL & STATEMACHINE.DLL).

Once the above is complete install SH III again, and take the DVD out of the DVD Drive.

Do NOT play the game after installation.

Now you will need to patch the game, patch 1.4. Ensure you install the correct patch i.e. EMEA-DVD, EMEA-DL, US-DVD, US-DL (see here).

Do NOT open the game after this process.

Now copy the 5 data sets into the main menu of your Silent Hunter III installation.

That’s it; you can now play Silent Hunter III Starforce free.

Important note: This method will prevent you from running any other games which require Starforce.

[Onkel Neal]

Link updated.