So I'm playing with the Win 7 release candidate and decided to give one of my oft-unused StarForce protected games (TOCA Race Driver 3) a shot. Win 7 didn't like it one bit (see attached).

What are the chances it'll stay that way?

Slim to none, I'd say.

DRMLESS WINDOWS!! Quickly!! Someone modifiy that build to remove the timebomb it has!!! :D

I had the same problem with Obscure and Windows Vista (I had to download a crack to make it work). One of the reason I'm so glad that Obscure will be available on GOG.

After a little poking around, it looks like with at least this game, and likely any others that use the same version of Starforce (3.07), it will never work in Win 7. Starforce offers an update utility on their site, but doesn't actually do anything except re-activate the existing driver, which Windows proceeds to disable again on a reboot. Basically, unless the publisher/developer releases a patch that updates the Starforce version on a game to at least version 4.5, the game will never work... well, without a crack, that is.

ToCA Race Driver 3? Download the GOG version and be done with it.

It wasn't about playing the game, it was about testing DRM in Win 7. I actually don't really like the game, I got it for free with a video card purchase.

This makes me so happy. Thanks for posting.

That's pretty funny.

Yup, it works fine. The only issue I had was after exiting the game, Windows prompted me saying that the hardware configuration utility might have been "installed incorrectly", but it wasn't.

This is an interesting find, but not surprising; while Windows 7 works with the vast majority of Vista drivers, those that have special behaviour, an absolute OS version check, or use nasty hacks (which StarForce no doubt does) probably won't work.

Eh, I got the same message for Tages with the new Riddick game. I was almost disappointed, until I tried it and Riddick worked w/o a problem. Now I'm praising Windows 7 for keeping my machine free of that particular DRM :p.

DRM sucks.