Star Force Protection

I recently started using Windows Vista. Rest all is working great except the games. I am not able to get any of my games that use the star-force disc protection to play. I read somewhere that once the game installed we need to restart our Vista computer in order to finish the installation of starforce driver. Well i did the same but when Vista comes after restart it comes up with an pop message saying that "vista could not load the driver."

Though skipping this when i try to load the game, i again get the same error message. Is there any working solution for this? Many thanks.

You can try disabling the option to check for signed drivers before the star force driver can run. I guess this will fix the problem. Try it and let us know the result. By the way can you tell me if your Vista is 64-bit or 32-bit? I am asking this because disabling signed driver check in 64bit operating system will surely work but i cannot be so sure for 32 bit editions.

Thank you very much for your help GARTH. Unfortunately i am using 32bit and your solution dint work for me. Any other help please?

By the way here is my complete Specs:

• asus pc800 deluxe MB
• Intel P4 HT 800FSB 2.4Ghz
• Corsair XMS 2Gig
• ATI x700 256mb
• Raptor 10,000 rpm HD

It is very well known problem with Windows Vista and StarForce drivers. There are very less chances of making them work together. By the way here is a excerpt from the ExtremeTech report: Will Vista run your games?

Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory The latest stealth action thriller from Ubisoft doesn't work in Vista, but it's probably not any fault of the application itself – it's the StarForce copy protection. StarForce installs a low-level (ring 0) driver to access your optical drive, and this driver has not been Vista certified. So Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory asks you to reboot after installing, which you do, and then upon reboot Vista informs you that it won't load the driver due to "compatibility problems." The 32-bit version of Vista will allow unsigned kernel-level drivers if installed from an account with admin privileges -- as ours was. We were unable to find any sort of workaround or Vista-ready driver on the StarForce site. What's worse, the StarForce driver will try (and fail) to load every time you reboot, even if you uninstall the game, and the removal tool doesn't work properly by default. It doesn't give you any indication that it didn't work, however. You have to run it as an administrator by accessing the Compatibility tab in the removal tool's Properties menu. Visually, it looks like it's doing the same thing as when you don't run it as an admin, but it will at least get StarForce off your system.

Just an Update. After spending few hours on web seeking for help finally i found a STAR FORCE FIX!!! While reading few articles on StarForce support i found a page where they had mentioned that StarForce has released a fix for vista gamers. I am gonna try this out later tonight on my system and let you know if it works. Others who facing the same can get the patch from this link.

I tried applying the StarForce Patch on my vista system last night. After the same i was able to boot up my system fine with starforce driver but whenever i tried to launch the starforce application, my computer freezes completely.

I tried running the apps in compatibility mode of Windows XP, tried running it as an Administrator by right clicking the setup file but yet the same result. The system freezes and the only way out is to hard reboot. So the conclusion is patch also doesn't seems to be working with vista.

Seems like you have some problem on your PC itself Anantram because from the link provided by you above i downloaded the patch and installed on my Vista. For me it is working absolutely fine. I can play Lock-On, and Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory. I am using P4 820 "D" 2.0 GB RAM, ATI X850XT, Benq DVD RW "Lightscribe", and other hardware.Can someone else try out the patch?

im having the same problems, i am trying to install the game prince of persia the two thrones. and i can't run it because starforce is incompatible with my computer.

i checked the link you gave out but when i clicked it an error (404- HTML not found) occured. can someone help me please.

I believe you install the game and then update the Starforce driver to be compatible with Vista before you run the game. Starforce doesn't get installed until you first run the game when it asks you to reboot the PC. Now that you tried to run it Starforce has already tried to install. Starforce has a Starforce driver remover tool at their website. Get that and run it to unintall the Starforce driver and then get the Vista compatible version from them and install that.

I cant get this to work on Rainbow Six Lockdown . I just got my new game rainbow six lockdown and when i try to load it up it just gave me Star Force protection technology and it wont download y?

Users of products protected with 3.x/4.x/5.0 versions are supposed to make contact with the program's developers or publishers protected patches for Windows 7, or use the previous version of Windows to run the products. Find the file in the folder protect.dll protected application (the file may be named differently, but always has a .Dll), right-click and select Properties. Then select the Version tab. The version number in the BuildSignature protection (or BuildInfo) section.