:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

Well, that hardly seems to be a fair deal. What do I get?

It is not okay with me, and I feel people should be told about the problems that others have expierianced but continuing these topics in this manner only serves to Disproportion that.

With people going on about "Something has to be done." "StarForce is a Virus!" or "A friend of mine had to do this or that!" it leads the majority of the people into a state much like Takeda Shingen described.

I lost some hardware yes, it cost me, no I didn't have the money to replace it, I spent several months working up the funds. YES, I have issues with it!

But it wasn't a PERSONAL LOSS! Computers are doomed to fail one day or another. No system will remain Stable Indefinately.
Educate, say your piece and move on. Stop trying to prove a point and just let people judge for themselves. There are topics much like this one everywhere online so let people read those and make up their minds rather then bring up old ones like this or make new ones.

We Do Not Need More Anti-StarForce campaigns, the ones we have are as annoying a reminder as needed.

As for SF being potentially Dangerous I have no doubt in my mind that it COULD or MIGHT cause damage to someone's machine but that is... as I have said many times in this topic: UNPREDICTABLE!
It is a POTENTIAL risk it DOES have DRM Activities such as Remote Trojan and Ring-"0" there that has beeng said. No more need to bring it up AGAIN.

Lets be clear about this, I do educate and I would move on if SF where honest about the mistakes and cleared up their mess. Instead peeps like myself have had to come along and get other peeps systems functional for them again.

An example of the ridiculously bad tech support SF gives: Click Here to read a thread on Gamespot.

What was Ubisofts reponse to me curing the (Code 41) error for them and SF?

Ans: They shut down the SF thread on the Prince of Persia Section of their forums.

They are perfectly entitled to do that however snubbing the peeps that are saving their collective butts is not very good business sense. Its even worse that in fact I am an online journalist that owns a number of top gaming/tech support sites.

The hardware issues are annoyances and not everybody can afford to replace hardware before its time.

However this does not take away the more serious issue that Ring 0 to Ring 3 level programs access makes Sony's Rootkit look like something out of Kindergarten.

I am seriously trying not to scaremonger here, but lets have an example, I know plenty of Doctors that use their surgery PC's for playing games in the odd few minutes break they may get in an day. Heck they like to unwind just like anybody else.

How would you like your medical records broadcasted on the net or maybe somebody suddenly give you HIV positive status? Do you know how hard it is to get your records corrected?

This is just a minor infringement of Databases however it can be more serious than that.

SF is a Hackers dream, a program used by the industry, silently installed onto Gamers systems and leaves them wide open, no matter how good you’re anti spyware, anti virus or firewall is.

Even if those apps could detect it, SF have deals with every major Security Software manufacturer to ignore SF (This includes Microsoft!).

That may not bother you and that is entirely your own choice, but I fully understand what this means and it goes far beyond being able to run a specific game.

OK NOW HEAR THIS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The LINK is Fake! Or the info in it is a LIE. Mark never talked to any Magazine......I urge all of you to write a letter and express your concern over this deception.
management@cdfreaks.com


I just got a response from Mark and he said this:

No magazine. I don't know where they got that.




Original Email:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Larry
Sent: Sunday, January 29, 2006 2:21 PM
To: Mark Russinovich
Subject: Starforce


Hello again Mark...
I read this article http://www.cdfreaks.com/news/12970 And Was wondering what Magazine contacted you? I thought it was probably I that was first to contact you. Can you name the magazine please?

Thank you,
Larry

To be more productive with my responses.

DMA step down caused by SF I/O authorisation errors on the IDE channels, (WIn 2000 to XP steps down DMA access speed each time this occurs, eventualy that will drop into PIO mode, rendering playing of DVD video almost impossible and attempts to Burn CD/DVD's with just create coasters, thats assuming you can put up with the 1 to 2 hour burn times in that mode).

Warning not all current CD/DVD drives support PIO mode for any extended period of time. They can interpret this mode as an overburned disk and slam the laser mount into the case, stripping the worm gear and trashing the drive. The only cure for that is to replace the drive.

DMA Step down: (How to fix this)

1. Use the SF removal tool. Click Here to get it.

2. Go to the device manager and (left click) on DVD/CD rom drives,

3. (Right click) on each drive and click uninstall. (cancel the message to reboot)

4. (Left click) IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers.

5. (Right click) the primary IDE channels and (left click) uninstall.

Do the same for the secondary IDE channel (and the IDE controller if its really stubborn).

If no hardware failure has occurred when you reboot, The system will search and reload the drivers, (Reinstating DMA instead of PIO mode access).



(Code 41) in the device manager.

(Code 41) means: "Windows successfully loaded the device driver for this hardware but cannot find the hardware device". In al sense and purposes it looks like Hardware failure.

To workaround this behavior:

Create a restore point start menu-all programs-accessories-system tools-System restore and follw the prompts.

1. Save the filter driver registry entries, just in case of problems, goto start menu-run type in "CMD.exe" without the " " then (left click ok) and at the Command shell prompt type in:

regedit /a SaveFilters.reg HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}


and 'hit' enter, that should save the filters section of the registry.

2. using 'notepad' Copy / Paste the following and save it to a NoFilter.reg file in the root , windows or ,my documents folder:

REGEDIT4

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}]
"UpperFilters"=-
"LowerFilters"=-

3. Merge the NoFilter.reg file with your registry or start menu-run type in "regedit /s NoFilter.reg" without the " " and click OK.

4. Shutdown and restart your computer.

If you notice loss of functionality in any remaining DVD/CD-ROM software, you may need to uninstall and re-install it.

Oddly enough you may also need to uninstall and reinstall windows media player.

Should it all go belly up, boot into safe mode and carry out a system restore to the previously saved restore point, or at a command shell type "regedit /s SaveFilters.reg" to merge the previous filters back.

I did say it sounded very "constructive news". For those of us without a legal Dictionary its A polite way of saying 'it was a pack of lies'. :lol:

I do hope it was just a bit of over zealous reporting rather than back handers being thrown their way.

If I get proof to the contrary, then that news site will see what its like to be at the end of a real online journalist’s keyboard. As you already know I am no holes barred, I will rip them to shreds if this is yet more SF propaganda.

REPEATING................


OK NOW HEAR THIS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The LINK is Fake! Or the info in it is a LIE. Mark never talked to any Magazine......I urge all of you to write a letter and express your concern over this deception.
management@cdfreaks.com


I just got a response from Mark and he said this:

No magazine. I don't know where they got that.




Original Email:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Larry
Sent: Sunday, January 29, 2006 2:21 PM
To: Mark Russinovich
Subject: Starforce


Hello again Mark...
I read this article http://www.cdfreaks.com/news/12970 And Was wondering what Magazine contacted you? I thought it was probably I that was first to contact you. Can you name the magazine please?

Thank you,
Larry






I THINK THIS LINK NEEDS TO BE CLOSED AND LOCKED AND ALLOWED TO DIE!!!! But I urge ALL of you to write CDFREAKS and give them a piece of your MIND!

Thank you!

Larry

Let me ask a question into how many drivers you will see in the device manager once SF is installed. I think I saw 3. Are there more than that? I just want to make sure I got it completely wiped clean. Sorry to change the subject. Just wondering from anybody out there. Please continue your thread otherwise. :-?

Just what in the world makes you think it is a Hacker's dream?

Hackers are above all else AGAINST Coorperate Industry. What you have defined is a 'script kiddie' who uses prewritten code to access exploits.

As for your worst case scenario there. I don't think anyone in the medical field would be allowed to play such graphic intensive games on computers that don't have Graphics Cards. And most medical network refuse to link with privately owned PCs because of the security risk.

you are stirring a panic over something POTENTIONALLY dangerous! A Script kiddie would need several things in order to find, target and attack your PC.

your FireWall may not prevent SF from accessing the net, that is true but a Script Kiddie would need your IP, would need to sniff for what port SF is using and then above all else would need to know How to Exploit the Cy-Door. I don't think SF is handing out the secret to that, by the way. But before doing any of this he would have to know you were running SF and were vulnerable.

And YES, if you use a proxy to web-browse and a FireWall such as ZA it is very difficult to get your IP and most script kiddies look for easier prey. And no Hacker would even bother because using an exploit is no challenge.

YOU CAN PROTECT YOURSELF!

Now that is productive, it didn't sound like another "OMG STARFORCE IS THE NEXT Y2K!"

Yep I do try and cure the issues that get raised as do a lot of other so called anti star force peeps.

Sadly hardware failure and the Ring 0 issue are out of my hands.

The hardware failure is an issue with the manufacturers of the drives or Starforce Technologies over causing the step DMA step down in the first place.

The Ring 0 issue can only be cured by removing SF or by cracking the SF virtual driver so it is no longer needed. Obviously we cannot legitimately do the latter one because of Copyright protection laws. So the ball is in Starforce Technologies court.

The alarming thing is that Starforce Technologies are fully aware of the (Code 41) issue, they did not tell peeps how to cure it. Instead they issued a bogus challenge.

Anybody with even the smallest amount of understanding of the technology knows that the continued PIO mode cause of drive failure is highly unpredictable and almost impossible to trigger on demand.

So the challenge is basically rigged in their favour.

Interestingly they still refuse to take up my challenge against them.

Read pages 1 through 2 of this thread, I posted it somewhere in there.

I never really cared about the Ring 0 situation. The vast majority of gamers log in with admin rights, that alone makes their systems 100% attackable, also on a hardware level. Even in a company environment there sometimes are many Windows installations that don´t use restricted user rights. A virus writer who plans to kill a huge amount of 2000/XP-based PC´s doesn´t need the help of SF and I guess you know that, right?

People are naive if they think that the things you´ve described can´t happen just because SF is no longer on their system. The real danger to a PC are those people who open every suspicious email attachment, who don´t install security updates, who allow all standard XP services to run and so on...

As Mustang has already pointed out, you are spreading panic! You should really try to put things into perspective. Again, once you use admin rights your system is, generally speaking, wide open. Even with restricted user rights and without SF a piece of malware can do very nasty things. There´s no such thing as a risk-free PC.

any chance of changing the thread title now that its been exposed as made up?