OMG!!!

Here is my Spore post patch problem.

http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/list/3700.page

Ok so i just had a baby boy this sunday so I have been fairly unable to play anything, I didn't load up anything after my spore patch problems just didnt have time. Tonight I finally got some time and had bought Warhammer: Age of Reckoning. So I get it installed and start playing, man is everything choppy.

Ok so I am kinda upset its like Spore post patch kind of choppiness. Hmm ok lemme load up World of Warcraft, thats the best written graphics engine I know of, well well its choppy as heck, crysis, its choppy too, what in the heck is going on here!?!?!?

So I figure its one of two things

1) Something in the spore patch hosed my vid drivers, this seems really strange.
2) It has something to do with SecuROM, I am thinking this is the case since I remember the nightmare systemwide problems I ran into with Starforce and City Life, that ended up causing me a full system wipe

Sooo, I uninstall Spore (its still installed with patch I was testing the performance options to see if I could get it playable) thenI uninstall SecuROM using these instructions (the securom uninstall tool doesn't work)

http://www.reclaimyourgame.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=68&Itemid=40

note:
I had no uaservice7 nor cmdlineext.dll, I did have to install the dldelinv utility to delete files in the securom folder.

And low and behold everything is running as smooth as it was before installing the patch, and uh no i am not reinstalling Spore to find out if I can get it to work without SecuRom.

Holy crud. I have never ever looked forward to a PC game as much as spore and now because of some idiotic DRM 3rd party tool I can't play it!!!!!!! I am betting there was a SecuROM update included with the patch that hosed things up for some users. The inclination that I had before is gaining legitamacy, there are at least a good majority of users who are running Spore with a legal key and the pirated install, that or a legal key and Spore installed with SecuROM uninstalled. Either one of these conditions based on my problem with the patch would have prevented the problem.

This is just unbelievable and I have never ever said it before but I want my money back. EA/Maxis if you want DRM write it yourselves I am sick and tired of companies thinking they can buy these products and integrate them into their release cycles. Oh and EA/MAxis if your testing all these problems and not testing SecuROM as well, theres your problem and probably the majority of folks problem with this patch.

I could of told you that . The pirated version of spore runs faster than the legit version

Oh my gawd! A piratist! He copied a game! Report him! Hes going to mass produce them and sell them on the black market and ea/maxis will lose millions!

PS: Is anyone NOT a pirate these days? I love blowing stuff up and--... oh wrong pirate.

Securom breaks systems. We all know this already.

Thank you for this post. I have now officially removed that securom crap and can still play Spore just fine. Gameplay is much smoother, although I still have invisible creatures, laggy sound, missing graphics and random crashing.

Yes, most reports of folks having issues and are system savvy say it seems to stem from SecurRom checking various IRQ setting to make sure you're not copying things. Watching while you play, when you have securom on your system it is constantly poking every port, card slot, drive etc. It does this with any application you use once installed.

Because of it's sector zero placement it also gets priority on the memory and IRQ usage (even though it is just a verify). So some crashes are simply Spore and SecurRom going for the same location at the same time. Oh and the DRM's memory usage can get big during a drive check. It gets priority and does not report it's memory usage properly to your governing OS. This will of course create many problem if you are tight on memory.

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. Good thing you installed this on your system eh?


Forgot to mention that using thing like Netflix streaming movies, you'll occasionally get a IE crash when it checks the com port, 10/100 card etc. Sometimes even a IRQ bluescreen.

Yep poetry I hate having ring0 crap installed on my comp. not thinking I had installed Spore as my main account (which is an admin) so it installed the ring0 crap.

Also everything worked fine with 1.0 and secuROM so I am guessing they released some kind of update to secuROM in 1.01 that is at the root of all the problems. And 10 to 1 they released something to try and kill pirated versions trying to install the patch. And it appears the pirated versions without secuROM are unaffected by the patch and legit copies get hosed.

This is what truly makes me angry is that not only are they imposing DRM on the legitamate customers but their using a 3rd party tool and not properly integrating into their testing and release cycle.

I am thinking of starting a poll

Copy - Installed Spore as admin - Have problems with the patch

1. Legit - Yes - Yes
2. Legit - Yes - No
3. Legit - No - Yes
4. Legit - No - No

5. Torrent with legit key (no secuROM), have patch problems.
6. Torrent with legit key (no SecuROM), no patch problems
7. Legit copy of spore with SecuROM uninstalled, have patch problems
8. Legit copy of spore with SecuROM uninstalled, no patch problems

Wait wait wait wait wait...are you saying that we can uninstall SecureROM and still play the game?

azated wrote:Oh my gawd! A piratist! He copied a game! Report him! Hes going to mass produce them and sell them on the black market and ea/maxis will lose millions!

PS: Is anyone NOT a pirate these days? I love blowing stuff up and--... oh wrong pirate.

Be hard to report me I'm one of the few who owns the galactic edition .

theultimateend wrote:

Be hard to report me I'm one of the few who owns the galactic edition .

Hey, there's two of us!

I'm really enjoying my expensive new bookend, thanks to the patch!

Glad those with problems were able to get rid of it easily.

Here's hoping they get rid of that nonsense soon.

schlippo wrote:Wait wait wait wait wait...are you saying that we can uninstall SecureROM and still play the game?

I'm wondering about this myself. My guess would be no, no, and a double extra helping of no.

the patch didnt cause the problem, seriously, i reinstalled after COMPLETELY wiping all the files for the game from all places and then planning on just clicking the "Later" button when it got to menu to bypass the patch, it once again crashed on startup
i hadnt even got to the part where it tries to install the patch
i had JUST installed the game, meaning the patch was not installed yet
and i started spore and it crashed
therefore, patch isnt the problem

I am still intrigued by the possibility of not needing securom. I have officially given up on playing Spore until a fix is released I have done everything and have whined to no end, and even if it works for an hour it is only temporary. I would like my comp to get back to working smoothly with my other games until Spore is functional. I also have to emphatically refuse to reinstall as I don't want to deal with DRM issues later.

Correction: SecuROM is the problem with the newfound lag in the patch. I had a bloated 5yr old win2k install and could play halo 1 on the highest settings no problem. I installed XP just for Spore, wiped my drive clean (reformat) and installed, spore, firefox, and halo. I can't even play halo on the lowest settings, it's unbearable. Ridiculous.