Vista - Did Starforce harm my dvd drive or does Vista just suk?

just before i installed vista on this pc, i installed x3, a starforce
protected game and the first/last starforce game that my newer Plextor dvd
drive experienced. since then i've done a complete format and installed vista.

i have not installed any starforce crap in vista btw, first i noticed most
of my games an error message informing me to please insert the orginal cd
(all legit and worked fine with this drive before) pretty much all my games
with cd checks or copy protection do this under vista. however if i use a
nocd cracks they work fine.

then i noticed i cannot burn anything
i tried to burn a linux distro to cd, vista tries to format it and later
says it cant.
so i install 3rd party apps that work in vista...none can burn to it, some
ruin them with disc being blank after attempted burn yet no freespace
virtual drive 11 couldnt burn the linux data to it neither, said for me to
please insert a blank disc despite there being one in.

i tried a different brand cd...same results
i tried a dvd +r...same results

finally i tried update firmware...nope, same problem
its a plextor 755sa btw

i've heard starforce can damage some drives, but cannot know if its vista or
if my drive is no longer able to work properly.....it does install games
fine, i can read files from it fine, it can play dvd movies.

Funnily enough I've just installed X3 too. But since I'm running x64 the
starforce drivers weren't signed and thus it borked my system. I didn't
really want to install starforce, so it's given me the excuse I needed to
get a no-cd hack - which I duly did.

Starforce has been remoured to have ruined drives in the past but it's a
rare occasion. If I were you, I'd run the starforce removal tool, get the
hacked EXE from gamecopyworld and see if that is any better.

If you get the error that the drivers are blocked by the operating system due
to incompatability issues, you need to run the star force update utility from
the star force website and update the protection drivers to be vista
compliant.

"CJM" wrote:

> Funnily enough I've just installed X3 too. But since I'm running x64 the
> starforce drivers weren't signed and thus it borked my system. I didn't
> really want to install starforce, so it's given me the excuse I needed to
> get a no-cd hack - which I duly did.
>
> Starforce has been remoured to have ruined drives in the past but it's a
> rare occasion. If I were you, I'd run the starforce removal tool, get the
> hacked EXE from gamecopyworld and see if that is any better.
>
>
>

"IceHockeyJason" <IceHockeyJason@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:3FA10C6E-D833-42B7-916C-08A8FF2C8BC3@microsoft.com...
> If you get the error that the drivers are blocked by the operating system
> due
> to incompatability issues, you need to run the star force update utility
> from
> the star force website and update the protection drivers to be vista
> compliant.
>

Or kill two birds with one stone; download a hacked EXE which avoids the
problem altogether.

CJM schrieb:
> Or kill two birds with one stone; download a hacked EXE which avoids the
> problem altogether.

There is a better aproach (at least if you want to play online):
contact the game support, as for most starforce protected games, there
is some kind of key combination you can hold down while starting the
game, prompting you to enter a key to deactivate starforce. The keys are
unique and you usually have to register with your normal cd-key (for
verification purpose) to obtain yours.
Contact the publisher and they should be able to help you.
For some games (for example X3), they even offer patches, that remove
starforce from the game completely for registered users.