Why I hate SecuROM. (And fishing for help)

**TheDude** · April 23, 2008, 10:09 PM

I bought M2TW:Gold when it came out back in February from Amazon and played it until a few weeks ago when I was hit with nostalgia and downloaded Command and Conquer '95 from the developers website. They gave the game out in an ISO image and recommended that the images be mounted on a virtual drive such as PowerISO or DaemonTools. Now, before buying the game I read all of the posts about the problems with emulators, SecuROM and Kingdoms but I figured that after uninstalling PowerISO I would have no problems.

Looking back that was probably a bad idea

because, after I got Command and Conquer out of my system I went back to Medieval and got the "wrong disc detected' message from SecuROM and was unable to play Medieval. I contacted SecuROM support and after five E-Mails they deemed my disc faulty and told me to return it to the manufacturer. It's funny because I was able to uninstall and reinstall Medieval when this error message showed up so my disc was fine and I rarely took it out of my drive anyways so it was not scratched. I sent the discs to SEGA under their 90 day warranty since my perfectly good discs were deemed "Defective in their manufacturing" by SecuROM and I sat back waiting for my replacement to arrive. Now SEGA sent me E-Mail's telling me the discs were, like I said, perfectly in good condition and offered me a digital copy of the game in place of the discs or they could send them back to me for further troubleshooting, which they said in their e-mail, would probably result in me sending the discs back anyway repeating the whole process. Now as you can imagine I declined the digital copy because first, I paid to have the game in DVD format, not a limited 3 install only digital copy and second I will be playing all of the great mods out there and if i need to have a fresh install of the game I don't want to be worrying about how many installs I have on my digital version.

The root of this whole problem is SecuROM detecting PowerISO on my system, SEGA admits to this as well. They recommend that I uninstall PowerISO but I already did this and I still got the SecuROM error message "Wrong Disc Detected". I don't want the digital copy of the game because I paid for the hard copy of the game with unlimited installs.

So my question to the Total War community is this; Does anyone know how to completely remove PowerISO from my system and how to check for any remaining files that could interfere with SecuROM or which files SecuROM would detect from PowerISo so that I could delete them?

As many of you have already posted, having SecuROM on the Kingdoms disc was a very poor choice on SEGA's part. To sum up, I Hate SecuROM

.

**irishron** · April 23, 2008, 10:22 PM

If you're brave: http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/98...-bioshock-demo. I got this from Sega support even though it is not supported by them. Otherwise reformat your harddrive and throw away all securom games.

**TheDude** · April 23, 2008, 11:01 PM

Thanks for that link irishron

, but I want to still play Kingdoms so I can't toss the game out and I do not want to resort to piracy to play. I need to find out if there are any files left on my system that SecuROM would detect and prevent me from playing from the DVD of Kingdoms and how to delete them.

**irishron** · April 23, 2008, 11:04 PM

Just wish you good luck.

**petrus_** · April 24, 2008, 04:18 AM

Its likely that Securom finds some poweriso registry entries and you should be able to remove these with a reg edit program.
But this requires you to be extremely careful.
If your unfamiliar with regediting the easiest way is probably to call sega or and securom and inform them why you can use the product you purchased.
I dont know where your from but in Sweden we have a government agency that can help when a consumer gets into these sorts of problems.

Sadly i find it slightly amusing that easiest way to solve the issue is probly to download a crack. Its not software piracy if you use the crack to play a game you have payed for.
securom is a flawed way of attacking the copyright issues in a digital world and i find it ironic that one of the few times it actually does anything its a legitimate customer that gets prevented from installing a legitimate product.

**AlfonsoVIII** · April 24, 2008, 09:28 AM

Originally Posted by petrus_

Its likely that Securom finds some poweriso registry entries and you should be able to remove these with a reg edit program.
But this requires you to be extremely careful.
If your unfamiliar with regediting the easiest way is probably to call sega or and securom and inform them why you can use the product you purchased.
I dont know where your from but in Sweden we have a government agency that can help when a consumer gets into these sorts of problems.

Sadly i find it slightly amusing that easiest way to solve the issue is probly to download a crack. Its not software piracy if you use the crack to play a game you have payed for.
securom is a flawed way of attacking the copyright issues in a digital world and i find it ironic that one of the few times it actually does anything its a legitimate customer that gets prevented from installing a legitimate product.

Actually it is, you buy one copy of the software and put it on 1000 computers and have a crack on each one so Sega loses 999 copies worth of profits. Same line as download music or sharing it if you bought it.

**DarK_RTW** · April 24, 2008, 08:50 AM

I never found any issues with PowerISO and Kingdoms.

**Stefaan** · April 25, 2008, 03:09 AM

I've got the sdame problem, but only with kingdoms campaigns after installing the kingdoms patch. I can play the regular game, but none of the new campaigns since I installed the patch. Help?

**TheDude** · April 25, 2008, 03:47 AM

My discs are at SEGA still but they are sending them back because they couldn't figure out what was wrong and they only offered me the digital download of the game. But Stefaan's point about the patch for Kingdoms does make me remember that this happened after I installed the broken patch that everyone was having trouble with. However I did uninstall the game and then put a clean copy back on but was unable to play, so I am convinced its a SecuROM issue detecting some virtual drive emulator software. I'll see what happens when I get the discs back.

**irishron** · April 25, 2008, 08:55 AM

Originally Posted by TheDude

My discs are at SEGA still but they are sending them back because they couldn't figure out what was wrong and they only offered me the digital download of the game. But Stefaan's point about the patch for Kingdoms does make me remember that this happened after I installed the broken patch that everyone was having trouble with. However I did uninstall the game and then put a clean copy back on but was unable to play, so I am convinced its a SecuROM issue detecting some virtual drive emulator software. I'll see what happens when I get the discs back.

For emulators, did you read this? http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=160283

**TheDude** · April 25, 2008, 04:01 PM

Yeah I searched the forum for anything related to SecuROM and emulators but none of the topics covered what I was looking for.

**irishron** · April 26, 2008, 03:01 AM

You may not find what you are looking for. These are touchy subjects with the forum rules and with SEGA/CA. The only thing I can figure out is Sony has Securom to the point anything that looks pirate will shut down games. How much legitimate stuff gets included you would probably have to talk to Securom's website.

**pajomife** · April 26, 2008, 08:09 AM

There are antisecurom programs ,but those matters are comprehensibly forbidden in this forum,so you go to the net and make your own researches.Its easy.