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Thanks Pilotasso, info very much appreciated mate, I gave up on it last night and went to bed, woke up a bit worse for wear for work though. Thanks again, I owe ya a beer. :)

Yikes! I used a utility to report the driver associations and it reported that driver as an SF driver! Clearly not so! (I'll amend the post ...) Thanks for the heads up Moose! :oops:

It seems FC is not the first demo to get the StarForce treatment like this, read the link in this persons post, it is 6 pages of discussion of where this happened with another game and much the same objections and explanations occurred: http://forums.ubi.com/eve/ubb.x?a=tpc&s=400102&f=38610606&m=8581080482&r=3941033482#3941033482

Kill the the Demo starforce from your system and it will never hapen again. It will be installed again if you mess up with the demo's DLL's and try to run the executable. I can now ALT tab during the loading screen. I too had some strange internet page startup delays but once I cleaned up starforce it apears bo have solved that small problem. ahh, thanks, I thought perhaps I was the only one having this startup issue occurring and the modem going nuts. I thought it must be due to modding the demo to get the other flyables to work. I found where the driver is the System32\drivers folder sfdrv01.sys But if you remove them then go boot-up 1.1, then exit it, they are re-installed again by FC ... haven't worked out how to kill them yet in 1.1, but I haven't had the PC freeze-ups today either.

Did some digging to find out what StarForce ProActive 1.1 is, and isn't. It apparently is a very sound anti-pirating method, and crackers are unlikely to get around this one easily any time soon (though I'm sure they'll try). The latest update will be even tougher to crack then it already was and I'll be surprised if this is not the version FC comes with ... read below. -- http://www.star-force.com/protection.phtml?category=10&type=1&id=673 Events StarForce releases an updated version of its protection 07.02.2005 With the release of an updated version of its protection, StarForce has won another victory over pirates, providing calm for publishers of licensed software. The new version of StarForce features the “NewATAPI” technology, which, when used together with the previously announced “ISO-protection” technology, prevents bypassing the protection algorithms using IDE-interface blocking. This approach is often utilized by malicious users trying to launch the application from an illegal copy or an image of the licensed disc, using various utilities provided by crackers. The updated version of StarForce withstands the latest cracking tools, such as the "StarForce Nightmare" utility.The new protection version was made available to StarForce’s clients on February 2, 2005. All customers get the update for free. -- http://www.brothersoft.com/Utilities_Word_Processors_StarForce_ProActive_SN100_28744.html Licensing and protection solution including 100 release and ten test licenses to protect a software product. The Client is free to customize the given amount of licenses according to his preferences and the product target audience requirements. Save revenue loss by protecting your software product from illegal distribution and use. The StarForce ProActive SN100 suit allows to apply the licensing system and protect one software product developed to run under MS Windows 98/ME/NT4.0/2000/XP. StarForce ProActive Features Protected products can be delivered to end users via any software distribution channels (CD/DVD-ROM and CD-R discs, electronic delivery). The software product is locked to hardware parameters of the end user's computer and cannot be started till the license is activated. Different product activation modes, including automatic activation and manual activation by e-mail or phone. Product licensing modules include promotional licenses (try&buy, try&die, demo, etc.), enhanced security licenses (Terminal Server Lock feature, sophisticated PC binding schemes), and corporate licenses including various types of site licenses and subscriptions. Selective regions blocking to prohibit activations from unwanted locations. License black-listing to prevent stolen licenses activation. All communications with StarForce activation server are performed via the secure SSL protocol, ensuring that no eavesdropping, tampering, or message forgery may take place. Open architecture of the activation server to provide easy integration with online billing systems and publisher's web site. Such an approach allows the publisher to avoid generating batches of licenses in advance and instead to automatically generate individual licenses on demand directly from the publisher's web site or an online store.

Yeah that's pretty much the way I see it VapoR, but I have had a recurring problem with the 1.1 demo, sometimes when I start the demo it goes to the start up screen graphic of the 'T', then my computer freezes completely and I can't do anything, I can't ALT-TAB, I can't Ctr-Alt-Del, nothing, so I have to reset the PC. Never had that happen before, and it kept happening when I started 1.1, on Tuesday it happened once again, PC is completely frozen on the 1.1 start screen, but this time I looked over and noticed that my ADSL modem lights were blinking furiously but I knew there were no internet programs open ... so I unplugged it (suspecting a security issue) and guess what? My PC instantly unfroze and 1.1 started up. Now I don't know what happened there, but I'm certainly concern about that, because my net connection was open and furiously sending data and I wasn't controlling it ... and that has never occurred to me before, and I have quite a bit of up-to-date PC security on this system. So now I read about this Starforce issue with the demo ... hmmm … it is disconcerting. If I hadn’t experienced these uncontrolled internet traffic related PC take-overs when 1.1 demo starts I would probably not be concerned much about Starforce, but after this … I dunno. My system security programs report it as clean and secure, but what the hell was my modem doing when the PC was freezing up starting 1.1? ... Admittedly, I have heavily modified the demo with 1.02 components, so is this the Starforce responding to that? ... has anyone else had this freeze up occur as 1.1 boots? I would like to know if this is a common occurrence and why it is happening. -- EDIT : I used that Starforce Driver removal tool discussed on the previous pages and it did its thing then asked to roboot the PC, after reboot the 1.1 demo still worked. No freeze up. EDIT #2 : ahh, I see it reinstalls itself ... cute.

Look SK, I extended to you the common courtesy of crediting you with having thought about things a little and done a bit of digging in your time, and of having something to say on such matters, but if you can't manage to extend that basic courtesy to others in return, then STFU fella! I’ll ignore you.

What is that difference? -SK Go read something on it if you don't know the difference SK, don't waste my time with such dumb questions. You seem to need to go re-evaluate some of your acquired axioms and assumptions.

Source? err, I thought I made it fairly clear; "practically impossible", i.e meaning in actual practice; and "I think this...", i.e. meaning I was stating an opinion about the likelihood of making this work in practice" To me that overall technique looks to be a high probability recipe for getting shotdown in short order. Even opinions can be based on something, like, practical experience with radar, or something read in a book, or a conversation with a pilot, or even experience in other sims. Everything I've read and heard indicates the Doppler notch is a quite real and common phenomenon. We didn't invent this concept for sims - it came to us from the practical world of military tactics. I've read of Harrier pilots using it against German MiG-29s, Soviet pilots in Germany using it against F-15s during the Cold War, a Hungarian NATO pilot using it against F-16s, Eagles and Hornets using it against each other in training... It's described in the MiG-29 flight manual and numerous radar textbooks, modelled in the higher-fidelity sims, and seems to make intuitive sense. Why would anyone make it up? -SK Who said anything about "making it up"? I sure didn’t, so what are you talking about? As even yourself pointed-out earlier, with more than one attack radar to deal with it ain't gonna work, hence it's not a healthy technique to choose to use in practice, particularly in a current datalinked A-A environment. You are not suddenly going to disappear. You may briefly confuse a sensor, but that is more likely to occur in conjunction with and because of ECM, not via Doppler notching alone. Hence it’s an interesting theoretical possibility. No one was actually shooting at the other guy in the examples you listed. Don't mistake the textbook conceptual possibility of exploiting Doppler notch for a wise tactical manoeuvre if a real missile is heading for you.

Not if you use right. Beaming for me, is only useful for breaking SARH locks in terminal phase. Look at the way the AI employs it, it seems to have a sixth sense for knowing when the SARH missile is aboput to hit. When it´s about to hit they beam, break the lock, trash the missile. They get back and shoot you ARH missile :evil: . If you use the technic I said of looking up with you radar then you can´t be notched, but be aware that you end up in a bad position if there are more enemy fighters. I have a story when I was a young F4 pilot. Two Mig-25s notched me then fly straight towards me, notch again, until they were very close to me, as I didn´t see them with my radar, I had no EOS(F-16 don´t anyway :P), and I didn´t have a visual on them, adcquiring them was not easy. So as they were two and I was one scared little F-16 pilot they shot me down with it´s silent IR missiles. That is the end of what happened but bear in mind two Mig-29s were coming up, if I didn´t finish with the two Mig-25s they would kill me in no time when I were dealing with Mig-29s. If I tried to finish the Mig-25s the Mig-29s would splash me in no time, and the sky was pretty big to be maddoging AMRAAMs all over the place. All that if you don´t bear in mind that I had only 1 AMRAAM for each of them. Yes, you F4 pilots got it right is the AMRAAM training TE. PS: This Thread is ON FIRE. Good grief, you do realise I'm referring to using it in real life, don't you? i.e., "in PRACTICE". Mmm, no, I didn`t realize, but if it were possible (as many claim it is) those are some of the ways to use it. And don´t you think that if it didn´t work like that then real pilots wouldn´t bother to try it in first place, and if it worked then there are some ways to efficiently use it, making your statement that beaming in practice is getting yourself killed really, well, pointless, unless you back it up with a source. PS: When I said on fire I meant that, we are continiously posting on it. We meaybe not talking about missiles ballistics and logic, but we certainly do talk abpout everthing that revolves around missiles(ie. tactics, radar, ect.), I consider those topics as important and that are worth mentioning in this thread. Where did I say anything about; "...making your statement that beaming in practice is getting yourself killed .." I said NOTHING about beaming (because beaming is extremely effective for a number of well established reasons). I spoke only in relation to DOPPLER NOTCHING; there is huge difference. If you don't want to discuss the topic of this thread, then start another thread about a topic which you do want to discuss.

The thread is not on fire, its totally hijacked.

Not if you use right. Beaming for me, is only useful for breaking SARH locks in terminal phase. Look at the way the AI employs it, it seems to have a sixth sense for knowing when the SARH missile is aboput to hit. When it´s about to hit they beam, break the lock, trash the missile. They get back and shoot you ARH missile :evil: . If you use the technic I said of looking up with you radar then you can´t be notched, but be aware that you end up in a bad position if there are more enemy fighters. I have a story when I was a young F4 pilot. Two Mig-25s notched me then fly straight towards me, notch again, until they were very close to me, as I didn´t see them with my radar, I had no EOS(F-16 don´t anyway :P), and I didn´t have a visual on them, adcquiring them was not easy. So as they were two and I was one scared little F-16 pilot they shot me down with it´s silent IR missiles. That is the end of what happened but bear in mind two Mig-29s were coming up, if I didn´t finish with the two Mig-25s they would kill me in no time when I were dealing with Mig-29s. If I tried to finish the Mig-25s the Mig-29s would splash me in no time, and the sky was pretty big to be maddoging AMRAAMs all over the place. All that if you don´t bear in mind that I had only 1 AMRAAM for each of them. Yes, you F4 pilots got it right is the AMRAAM training TE. PS: This Thread is ON FIRE. Good grief, you do realise I'm referring to using it in real life, don't you? i.e., "in PRACTICE".

All I can say is that you seriously need to adopt some new missile avoidance techniques if that’s the case for you. :wink: Inside 20Km with circumstances I explained in my last post. What can one say? The world and military tech isn't meant to be 'fair'. :P And crashing a missile into the sea is trashing a missile, not a terminal missile avoidance manoeuvre. Anyway, this discussion has got what to do with missile guidance and ballistics? This is not the thread for this stuff.

Yeah, but I seriously doubt the F1 would have escaped mate. ;) (BTW, the Iraqis used predominantly French BVR and WVR A-A missiles in 1991, the Iraqis believed the ~95 F1s were their most capable fighters) I look at it a bit differently, I tend to think it's not all that practical a technique either, for the simple reason (already stated by SK) that in practice, you’ll be facing more than one fighter's radar. I say with some confidence, that in practice, using it is a recipe for getting shotdown fast.

Source? -SK err, I thought I made it fairly clear; "practically impossible", i.e meaning in actual practice; and "I think this...", i.e. meaning I was stating an opinion about the likelihood of making this work in practice" To me that overall technique looks to be a high probability recipe for getting shotdown in short order. There was a gulf war incident where an F-15C got notched by a Mirage, so he was coming down in a panic in autoguns trying to find it ... I saw this along time ago, the source seemed fairly credible, but I'm not going to hunt for it ;) Seems liek this is indeed practical ... especially in circumstances where a quick notch can take you out of the scan zone and make the other guy sweat - remember, he's flying more or less level so he can't actually see you ... otherwise, things change. LOL, yeah ... and who shotdown who in that encounter?

All I can say is that you seriously need to adopt some new missile avoidance techniques if that’s the case for you. :wink:

I´m not saying you can´t, only that if you do you end up in a position that you wouldn´t want to be into, you´ll get splashed anyway. I say if an eagle pilot has 120s and you are like 20km from him you have 20% chances of surviving, provided he knows were you are and he is somewhat trained. All this counting that you still don´t have a missile in the air, if you do you could splash him, but he´ll splash you to. Yes, inside 20 km the AIM-120 had a good PK, but only if you keep coming on against it, If you don't you can trash it EASY.

Source? -SK err, I thought I made it fairly clear; "practically impossible", i.e meaning in actual practice; and "I think this...", i.e. meaning I was stating an opinion about the likelihood of making this work in practice" To me that overall technique looks to be a high probability recipe for getting shotdown in short order.

Nope, I was using just one pitbull launched AIM-120 in the air at a time against the lead Su-30s (there were two, one trailing several miles), The first pitbull missile missed the closest Su but the second missile killed it, however the second Su-30 manoeuvred aggressively against the AIM-120 and lost it while dumping decoys, but once the Su had finished its missile avoidance turns it was now facing toward me more squarely :!: ... once I saw the AIM-120 miss I launched an AIM-9M at about 2.5 nm range, head to head, but the Su got off an R-73 a second later. I was super-sonic with full tanks and externals so couldn't turn (I had just topped up the tanks), and he was in an energy sink from the turns and could not escape, so we both got hit (yeah, should have dropped external tanks but the Su's were going after my tanker and getting very close to launch distance ... :shock: )

Unfortunately not against a low-level target they don't, I watched it last night and the Buks still fly a basically flat trajectory against low-level targets - that's why they are so easy to energy defeat.

Yeah, they really should be a LOT more careful what 'info' they place on their website, if that is the case ... :wink:

Nah, it’s Doppler notch, i.e. its about reducing relative velocities between the moving radar and the moving target so there is minimal Doppler shift difference in the EM return compared to the original EM emission. It means to approach as close to zero differential velocity as can be arranged, so that the attack radar's noise and clutter filtering algorithms are likely to interpret your returns as noise, and thus disregard your returns as a valid contact. It’s practically impossible to fly, let alone to fool a modern A-A radar to filter you out. Personally, I think this is an interesting theoretical possibility only, and not an actual flyable practical countering technique. EDIT: I should also add, this could however allow ECM to exploit the situation though, and thus compromise/confuse the attacking radar.

R-73 ... 40 km?! Very funny, as is the R-27TE = 130 km ... what a crock. :D

I see 8) Yeah the Buks are pretty easy to defeat by energy bleeding, then you just push them down low so that they intersect with the dirt. That shouldn't happen with, as you say, better interception logic/ballistics.

Nah, I had Su-30s defeating AIM-120s in 1.1 last night between 3-6 nm range. As always, decoys, altitudes, maneuvers and approach aspects mean there is no such thing as a true 'no-escape zone'.