[vois2]

MarkShot,

I reviewed your original post so that I could get a full handle on your intentions. I can see what you are doing clearly.

To activate your key, you do, yes, need access to the internet. After that one-time connection, you never need to have SH3 hooked to the Net. If you send me an email, I will send you a link to reach Harry Vansickle directly. If you pose the question to him about being able to activate the product without internet access, Harry may be able to assist you with your purchase from Direct2Drive. In this way, the SH3 XP install partition would never need to access the Net ever. I don't know if Harry can assist but it's worth a shot. It seems to me that it might work if there is a back door providing the activation of license keys without Net access.

The downloadable version is exactly the same as the DVD version, minus the DVD's extra StarForce driver framework for interacting with the optical drives.

All mods will work, as evidenced by my heavily modded downloadable SH3. I highly suggest making the backup copy of a clean virgin install exactly as you have described. I do this for all games which I plan to mod. However, forum contributor/software architect Jaessen Jones (JScones) has made the task of experimentation with SH3 mods particularly easy. His JoneSoft Generic Mod Enabler is just pure genius. You won't find a single poster in these forums who would advise you to apply mods in some way other than JSGME. Eventually, you'll want to check out his SH3 Commander product. Again, genius.

There is a positive response/answer to the very last question you posed, but I'll hold off on answering, since you would need to have SH3 already installed to understand the method, and have access to its file folder structure.

So as I see it, for you it would be:
1) download SH3 to partition M
2) copy it over to partition P, and execute it for the install on P
3) make a backup copy of this virgin program installation folder somewhere
4) apply SH3 patch ver 1.4b
5) Run SH3 once
6) download and install JSGME according to its read-me

After that, mods on and mods off will forever be done by the click of a button.