I agree, and I applaud Soulcommanders approach to this problem. Consumer leverage is the way to go here, and I'm glad to hear that Ubi is actually listening.

From the article:
And since when did consumers tolerate ANY kind of "standard" for problems with a product? In an age where cotton swab manufacturers have to provide a written warning that jamming a stick into your ear and scratching your brain might cause some eardrum discomfort/damage so they won't get sued when joe consumer uses a swab in an attempt to dislodge the five nickels that got jammed in there on a dare, I find it hard to accept that we as consumers would tolerate any kind of "standard" at all for this sort of thing.

@ Gizzmoe

with all due respect, why are you trying to pick up a fight with soulcommander and get this thread locked. If he wants to collect info from those with drive issues, please allow him. If he thinks SF destroyed his drive, and you think your's is working just fine, let it be. Its unlikely either of you will change each other's mind as neither is authority on the issue. Let UBISOFT and CDROM manufacturers decide what killed their drives and whether or not its SF for sure. People do have a genuine concern, but we aren't rocket scientists and this cant be 100% sure, its our inference from our experience and what we read about others experiences. We must try and raise our concerns if we want to have any hope of getting this issue resolved one way or the other.

I hope you take my point in a positive manner. Thanks

I´m not trying to pick up a fight, I only would like to have some answers. I have the feeling that SC tries to "sell" assumptions as facts, that´s what I don´t like. Maybe he can prove me wrong.

Thank you for the post above sik1977 !



Here is the original letter that Aaron McKenna wrote to Starforce after Starforce posted the article on their web site.
This has not been published or seen by anyone other than Starforce. I post this with Aarron's complete permission that he gave me this morning OCT 25 2005.

Again a man concerned and is very professional both in his letter and on the phone when I talked to him from Ireland.

I am here to help you guys and in turn help the gaming community.
I promise you that this isn't over yet. I want everyone to join in and write me if you have had any problem with UBISOFT or Starforce. Or any game that has had Starforce on it. However I am in contact with Ubisoft with this matter.
I thank Aaron again for allowing me to post this letter.
He is a gentleman and a very professional person concerned as you and I about what is going on.

Soulcommander

I think he's just trying to get people who have had problems (suspected/actual) to email him.

Sorry, still waiting for an answer! You wrote that countless others have reported destroyed drives. What does "countless" mean? 10? 100? 1000?

I'm one of those "countless" :shifty:

I've already posted above, I'm not sure if it is SF that caused my drive to act up, I'll admit that.
I did also say it is very strange that all of a sudden after the purchase of SH3 we see lots of posts about drives packing in, it didn't happen when we got SH1, it didn't happen when we got SH2 or Destroyer Command but it happens now, why?

I know drives do pack in sometimes but surely a lot all at once and some on fairly new machines from different parts of the globe, and the only coincidence is they bought SH3, if it isn't SF as some think then is it something in SH3 programming, I hope not?

I will ask other future posters to keep this thread from being locked though by not mentioning where or how to get other methods of copying etc or the thread WILL get locked and some good points and comments will get buried with other locked threads.

Soulcommander,

Firstly, thank you for taking up the SF baton on behalf of the gaming community. I think your thread speaks for itself!

I was however interested to read McKennas response to Zhidkov and then :rotfl: Zhidkov's 'curt' reply!

That is not the response you would have expected. Having said that, the software industry is run mostly by very young people with too few social/communication skills!

McKenna quotes..."The problems which myself and my peers have experienced on a variety of platforms across a variety of games and over a lengthy period of time whilst using your system cannot be put down to "ghosts".


Gizzmoe,

I appreciate you doing your 'moderator' thing and that's fine - you have a point and that should be to keep all things in focus!

EEEK! :o
I never really thought about it before, but my dvd-r drive does this!
Normally of late I have to eject the disk after the pc has booted to make it stop whirring away.
I have 2 games with SF on them: SH3 and Sniper Elite. The latter of which I bought when it came out last month or so- I can only recall the 'spinning drive' phenomonon after installing Sniper Elite (both games are published by Ubisoft, though SE is made by Rebellion).

My drive is : PIONEER DVD-RW DVR-107D

I had previously believed I had remained untouched by all of the troubles described in this and other threads about SF, but now I'm not so sure. The drive still burns CD-R data disks, but I have not tried any DVD-R's for about 8 months now. Maybe I should buy some and see if it still works :x

Edited
Your welcome sir. I'm delighted that Aaron was so gracious to let me post the email. It speaks for itself and relates feelings I had too when I saw the SF post as well as how others feel about the comments that were made there at Starforce headquarters.

I didn't notice a problem besides the spinning and one other thing in event viewer a message indicating time out errors pointing to the cdrw drive...the real problem occured when I burned our 25th wedding anniversary pictures. The burn was sucessful but took an unusual long time..more than normal. I did get burn errors too which wasnt the norm. This was the 16th burn on this new drive. I don't burn that much...Anyway after the burn the drive would not close and I had 9 blinking lights, then a pause and 9 more lights. etc etc. The tray would only close by finger force. The drive had to be pulled or XP when the tray was closed would pause (Hour Glass) like it was always looking for something in the drive, and you could do nothing in the operating system.

I would pull your drive now...It is thought that the excessive spinning at high rpms could be part of the drive failure. I dont mean to scare you but no one will reimburse you for the drive.
So pull it or reformat and then see what happens or try the drive in another pc with no SF on it.

Sorry to trouble shoot here gentleman but I want otherss to be helped as much as possible for those that do not write to UBI or take the time to write to me.

SC

Well I wasn't gonna, but I can't resist....

I am another one of those who's BRAND NEW DVD drive failed under Starforce..
My drive is totally different brand than Soul Commanders, yet, I experienced more or less exactly the same type of failure that SC did, and from what SC has been telling us in E-Mails I'm not the only one that experienced this and on different drives..
I was reasonably lucky in that the shop replaced my drive, BUT at the same time they warned me if the same thing happened again they would not replace it due to Starforce NOT being covered under the warrenty. (so looks to me like shops are starting to be warned by drive companies regarding this matter as well..)
That is why up to now, I have not had Silent Hunter 3 back on my system, I do not want to run the risk of losing another dvd drive. (They not cheap to replace here in NZ)
Anyway, that to me is positive proof...

Just boot without a CD/DVD in the drive if you are really so afraid that SF kills the drive during the boot process, there is no need to pull the drive or reformat the PC. And actually it´s ok for an optical drive to run "very, very fast" for a "prolonged period of time", they were made that! Modern DVD drives spin up to 10000rpm.

Please ask them what SF does to optical drives, they should be able to tell you exactly why SF more or less invalidates the warranty. Let us know what they told you.