Okay, so I bought CoD4 from Direct2Drive.com about 2 weeks ago. When I first downloaded it, I was unable to activate the product for some unknown reason. After several failed attempts with their support staff to rectify the issue, I finally made one last ditch effort rather then have them refund me the money I paid. I reformatted my PC. After doing this, I re-downloaded the game and reinstalled. This time it activated without issue.
So what did I do next? I went off and started reinstalling all my old programs. Everything worked fine until I installed Nero. Now my game won't load. I have a completely legit version of Nero 6 which came with my ASUS DVD Burner. So I started doing some research and found out that CoD4 has SecuROM with it.
So here's my question: am I forced to have to reformat my PC again and go through the whole process again in order to play CoD4? I can understand if I had Daemon Tools or something installed, but a completely legit version of Nero causes it to stop my game from playing? Does this mean that I can't use Nero or any CD recording software so long as I intend to play this game?
Just seems like more trouble then it is worth if you ask me.
You can't use any software that can emulate (or create a logical) disk drive. It's part of the anti-pirating software in place. You could always try to find an unofficial "patch" that could maybe force it to install.
Nero is rubbish imo, causes me several kinds of other problems. Like instability and slower dvdrom access times...
You could use imgburn, that also doesn't need any drivers to write discs, and you can create all kinds of data-cds too.
Does this game have their stupid security thing on it even in the CD version? Not the download. Suppose I bought this game from wally world and installed it on my PC. I have Roxio burner on my computer, would their security conflict?
And where would I find these "unofficial" patches?
Message edited by physx7 on 05-12-2008 at 05:05:02 PM
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The evening news is where they begin with 'Good evening', and then proceed to tell you why it isn't.
HP pavilion with: AMD 4400+ Athlon 64 X2 @ 2.3 Gigahertz, 400 gig samsung sata, 2 gigs pc5300, Lightscribe dvd burner, ATI Radeon HD 3850 256 MB.
Multiplay doesn't require the DVD to be inserted, but single player does. I got around this with a NoCD hack, and tech support seemed to be fine with my choice of action. (I also used the DVD version w/ no burning software whatsoever)
If anyone is still wondering about where to get this game, I got my copy from steam and have Nero, and I haven't had any problems as of yet. (Although Punkbuster has been giving me a headache but that's a different problem.)
Like I said before, I got my copy from Direct2Drive.com. The game works great, but it does come with SecuROM. I looked at that SecuROM Loader, but there were two issues I had with it:
1) It comes from a warez site...not someplace I'm interested in downloading anything.
2) It's clearly outdated as it was last updated in August of 2006. Obviously SecuROM has made numerous changes to their software since that time.
The poster who said that SecuROM has no effect on multiplayer is correct. It only effects the single player version. What it also effects though is your ability to update or apply patches. If you have emulators or even something as basic as Nero installed, SecuROM won't even allow you to apply the patches, which then in turn effects the multiplayer game because in my case, I had 1.2, but the servers are upgrading to 1.3. Hence, I couldn't even play multiplayer.
Last night, after I uninstalled and removed all registry entries for Nero and the damn thing still wouldn't work, I finally bit the bullet and reformatted my PC.
My main concern now is this. I primarily use Nero to backup my photos of the family. Well, if SecuROM is going to bitch over any burning software, I can't even do that! How much more legit does it get then just backing up photos of your family?
So now I have to make a choice, either play the game, or backup my photos. As soon as I install any burning software to backup photos, I have to be prepared to reformat if I intend to play CoD4 again. Oh and did I mention that when you reformat your PC, you lose all of the progress you made with the game (both single player and multiplayer)? That's right. I lost all of my multiplayer progress and had restart all over again.
What a crock and a major inconvenience! I love the game so much, but this is almost not worth it. I just want to be able to do whatever the hell I want with my PC, but it's crapware like this that takes away my freedom to do that.
Message edited by Stabgotham on 12-13-2007 at 08:54:01 AM
Sony says making copies of your own music you bought in a store to put on a mp3 player is copyright infringement/pirating your own stuff. No surprise they don't let a progrem like nero or daemon tools to run.
Yeah, that one chick said something to the extent of, "Making copies for yourself is essentially stealing." How that's stealing I will never know. But f*ck Sony, f*ck SecuRom. I own CoD4 and have no problems whatsoever. I think it's just the D2D version.
Yeah... Sony is one to talk about copyright infringement or anything illegal... It's not like they secretly bundled root kits with two instances of consumer software, and afterwards tried to play it off like it was no big deal.
I'm looking into the ImGBurn program currently. Maybe my efforts will help others who have hit this problem as well. According to the forums at ImgBurn.com, the program is simply an .exe so it should not cause any issues with SecuROM. I guess, I'll play the ginuea pig for us all here and give it a shot to see what happens. Not like I've got anything to lose as I have already reformatted twice in the last 3 days.
I'm also going to do some research into the reason that D2D has SecuROM loaded but the DVD or Steam does not. I mean, wtf is that? I'll report back shortly with an update.
I would recommend simply getting your money back, especially if it was offered. The only way we're going to stop this awful practice is to STOP buying games from companies who are willing to damage our computers to protect their games. The extra SecuROM software is not authorized to be on our system, and they give no warning on the outer package that they will be including hidden software or monitoring our computers.
In this case they actually took a step to interfere with another piece of legitimately owned software. I wonder if there will be any legal response from the makers of Nero to the people behind SecuROM?
The only people this hurts are the legitimate customers. Software pirates have no trouble with these issues at all.
The only people this hurts are the legitimate customers. Software pirates have no trouble with these issues at all.
Couldn't agree more. All it does is cause headaches and more problems for those individuals that purchase the game and don't understand how the "copy protection" stuff works. Pirates research this stuff and will find a way to break the copy protection in less than a week after release.
All it does is cause headaches and more problems for those individuals that purchase the game and don't understand how the "copy protection" stuff works. Pirates research this stuff and will find a way to break the copy protection in less than a week after release
+1
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The evening news is where they begin with 'Good evening', and then proceed to tell you why it isn't.
HP pavilion with: AMD 4400+ Athlon 64 X2 @ 2.3 Gigahertz, 400 gig samsung sata, 2 gigs pc5300, Lightscribe dvd burner, ATI Radeon HD 3850 256 MB.
SecurRom v7 maintains a software "blacklist" of software that is not allowed to have been run since the last reboot OR not allowed to be running at the time.
Most CD drive utilities that allows for virtual drives are blacklisted. This is stated on the retail box, although it says, "This product is not compatible with virtual drives".
Software that disables itself is not quite the same as incompatible, but the point is that the box at least says in advance what you should expect.
Some virtual drive software manufacturers have decided to make their virtual drives compatible with SecuRom v7, although specific discussion of this is beyond the scope of the forum. Contact your virtual drive manufacturer to see if they do this.
On the other hand, Bioshock uses SecuRom v7 with the online activation feature enabled. That has all the features of SecuRom v7, plus the additional feature of limiting the number of physical machines that the software can be installed on, and requiring online activation, ala Adobe, or MS Windows.
There's some other stuff about the SecuRom v7 online activation that makes the situation worse than this summary, but it's beyond the scope of this conversation. You can see the details in the previous Tom'sHardware coverage/ forum threads.
So, the DRM on COD4 is not the same as Bioshock's. It's not Starforce. I did not think it was hammerworthy, or I would have hammered it.
However, I have sovereignty over my computer. I have no intention of allowing SecurRom to dictate to me what software I can or cannot run on my computer, to the limit that no other user is affected.
You could always try to find an unofficial "patch" that could maybe force it to install.
