hawkian wrote:

rocketgirl wrote:

Pugnap00 wrote:

matterialize wrote:

"completely wipes their hard drive"

I think they're exaggerating their claim a bit.

yeah alot of it is exagerated. DRM doesnt wipe your hard drive

Um...that's not the issue.

Someone posted PDFs of the actual court documents earlier, and the DRM can't be removed without wiping your harddrive, not the DRM wiping your harddrive.

This is incorrect.

There is no need at all to panic people about this. SecuROM sucks SPORE, but it's fully removable upon uninstalling all related software. The same is true of Starforce, which is not at all related to Spore and is actually WAY more imposing and potentially damaging.

Just wanted to clear that up.

no, it edits your redistry so that you cant access part of it.

Whether the argument is strong or not... I can't help but hope they win somehow.

twobit wrote:

commandert wrote:to be honest it does sort of tell you you are installing it. you know that white box full of text you have to agree to to install the game, well in that it says the game uses various programs for copy protection and that there are install limits, it also tells you on the box that it needs activating and details of the install agreement can be found at a certain website

so it does warn you, if people cared that much they would read that in detail and search whats actually in the games they are installing before accepting that agreement

because ea can just turn around and say they accepted the agreement

i actualy do read through that text. it says nothing about securom.

it does it just doesnt name it specifically, ut it says its there in a workaround way

This is from page one of the EULA:

"Technical Protection Measures. Our Software uses access
control and copy protection technology. An internet connection
is required to authenticate the Software and verify your license.
If you are not connected to the Internet, you will not be able to
use the Software until you reestablish an internet connection
and verify the license. The first end user of this License can
install and authenticate the Software on a set number of
machines which may vary by product."

twobit wrote:

no, it edits your redistry so that you cant access part of it.

I'm sorry, but please do not post false information. SecuROM is not trivial, but you are going to mislead people and that never helps, especially people who are looking to remove SecuROM.

All of it, including the registry entries it makes and the Windows service it uses, are removable.

I can provide a guide of how to remove it if necessary. Wiping your drive will never be necessary because of SecuROM copy-protection, no matter how hard you try to get it to take over your computer.

hawkian wrote:

twobit wrote:

no, it edits your redistry so that you cant access part of it.

I'm sorry, but please do not post false information. SecuROM is not trivial, but you are going to mislead people and that never helps, especially people who are looking to remove SecuROM.

All of it, including the registry entries it makes and the Windows service it uses, are removable.

I can provide a guide of how to remove it if necessary. Wiping your drive will never be necessary because of SecuROM copy-protection, no matter how hard you try to get it to take over your computer.

are you serious, becouse i dont have any thing in stalled right now and im looking at the securom folder in my regedit, the one i cant access.

Do you currently have Spore installed?

The next step is to delete all the related game directories. There are AppData dirs that need to go as well before the registry will.

no, uninstalled all my games.

This is the general guide you will want to follow:


If you want to completely remove SecuROM after uninstalling this game, including the 'SecuROM User Access' Service it installs in Windows, follow these steps:

1. Uninstall the game as normal.
2. Manually delete the game directory (typically \Program Files\Atari\Crashday-demo\
3. Go to Start>Run and type "Services.msc" (without quotes) and press Enter.
4. Go to the 'Securom User Access' Service, double click on it, click Stop and then set it to Disabled.
5. Go to \Windows\System32\ directory and delete the UAService7.exe file.
6. Go to Start>Run and type "sc delete useraccess7" (without quotes) and press Enter.

Note: This Service may be recreated by one of your other SecuROM games, in which case you will have to keep it running to play them.

The following steps are very risky and only for people who are certain none of their currently installed games use or need SecuROM:

7. Go to \Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\ and delete the SecuROM sub-directory.
8. Go to Start>Run and type "Regedit" (without quotes) and press Enter. Then find the [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\SecuROM] key and delete it if possible.


--

If you have taken every step except the last and the directory is not able to be deleted, it's simply a ghost entry and while that's annoying, it won't do anything to your computer from there. You may need a third-party registry cleaner (such as RegCleaner) to remove the dead entry.

see the problem is i dont have access to the securom file in the regrestry, so i cant delete it.

hence the only way to get rid of it is a hard drive wipe.

hawkian wrote:They are.

In fact, understanding the issues at play fairly well, I believe the lawsuit will either be dismissed as frivolous or settled vaguely amid EA's ever-relaxing-under-incredible-community-response standards.

But hey, maybe they'll take them for a ride and walk away with millions.

EDIT: In case anyone is concerned, the claim that SecuROM "cannot be uninstalled" is simply not true. You need to have it installed to play Spore, as well as Bioshock and an annoying host of other major releases (Mass Effect?) It can, however, be removed fairly simply upon uninstalling all associated programs.

I actually cannot remove a few DRM files that are left hidden without loading in safe mode or using dos prompts.

So they aren't completely lying there. When you uninstall spore it stays hidden on your PC . Which is seedy to me.

hawkian wrote:This is the general guide you will want to follow:


If you want to completely remove SecuROM after uninstalling this game, including the 'SecuROM User Access' Service it installs in Windows, follow these steps:

1. Uninstall the game as normal.
2. Manually delete the game directory (typically \Program Files\Atari\Crashday-demo\
3. Go to Start>Run and type "Services.msc" (without quotes) and press Enter.
4. Go to the 'Securom User Access' Service, double click on it, click Stop and then set it to Disabled.
5. Go to \Windows\System32\ directory and delete the UAService7.exe file.
6. Go to Start>Run and type "sc delete useraccess7" (without quotes) and press Enter.

Note: This Service may be recreated by one of your other SecuROM games, in which case you will have to keep it running to play them.

The following steps are very risky and only for people who are certain none of their currently installed games use or need SecuROM:

7. Go to \Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\ and delete the SecuROM sub-directory.
8. Go to Start>Run and type "Regedit" (without quotes) and press Enter. Then find the [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\SecuROM] key and delete it if possible.


--

If you have taken every step except the last and the directory is not able to be deleted, it's simply a ghost entry and while that's annoying, it won't do anything to your computer from there. You may need a third-party registry cleaner (such as RegCleaner) to remove the dead entry.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. How is the average consumer going to know how (or even have the time or patience) to do this?

I'm not sure what you mean by SecuROM "file" in the registry. The registry stores settings and options that are inserted into the appropriate files that access them.

In any event, it seems there is a Microsoft app that you can use to remove them, though as stated, if you have taken all the other steps, the registry entries will just be annoying reminders of a long-gone DRM service.


"The Securom registry entries are deliberately made non-removable by default. In order to remove them download the hhttp://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/Miscellaneous/RegDelNull.mspx RegDelNull registry editing utility from Microsoft and install it on your C partition.
Run the following two commands from a Windows command prompt http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command_line_interface : "C:\regdelnull HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\SecuROM -s" and "C:\regdelnull HKEY_USERS\<Computer specific key>\Software\SecuROM -s" where "<Computer specific key>" can be determined by searching the registry for the "Securom" directory key. This "<Computer specific key>" typically has a form like "S-1-5-21-2052111302-1757341266-724545543-500". Once these two RegDelNull commands have been successfully issued the registry should be checked to confirm that these two keys have been deleted. If they are still present they will now be removeable due to the action of the RegDelNull utility. "

pcguy89 wrote:

hawkian wrote:This is the general guide you will want to follow:


If you want to completely remove SecuROM after uninstalling this game, including the 'SecuROM User Access' Service it installs in Windows, follow these steps:

1. Uninstall the game as normal.
2. Manually delete the game directory (typically \Program Files\Atari\Crashday-demo\
3. Go to Start>Run and type "Services.msc" (without quotes) and press Enter.
4. Go to the 'Securom User Access' Service, double click on it, click Stop and then set it to Disabled.
5. Go to \Windows\System32\ directory and delete the UAService7.exe file.
6. Go to Start>Run and type "sc delete useraccess7" (without quotes) and press Enter.

Note: This Service may be recreated by one of your other SecuROM games, in which case you will have to keep it running to play them.

The following steps are very risky and only for people who are certain none of their currently installed games use or need SecuROM:

7. Go to \Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\ and delete the SecuROM sub-directory.
8. Go to Start>Run and type "Regedit" (without quotes) and press Enter. Then find the [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\SecuROM] key and delete it if possible.


--

If you have taken every step except the last and the directory is not able to be deleted, it's simply a ghost entry and while that's annoying, it won't do anything to your computer from there. You may need a third-party registry cleaner (such as RegCleaner) to remove the dead entry.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. How is the average consumer going to know how (or even have the time or patience) to do this?

You aren't that's the idea behind keeping dormant files to be activated at a later time...you know...how virus's work .

Whoa, whoa, whoa. How is the average consumer going to know how (or even have the time or patience) to do this?

Whoa whoa whoa. When did I suggest that the average consumer would? Or should? I SPORE loathe DRM. However, stating that the average consumer wouldn't be able to do that without looking it up is NOT the same as stating that "there is no way to remove it without wiping your hard drive."

It's hyperbole. It's reactionary at best and unnecessarily so.