What is a StarForce Protection Driver

The StarForce Protection device driver is a software copy protection tool installed onto your Computer by PC game publishers without your knowledge or permission! StarForce Protection is designed to prevent the casual copying of retail CD ROM applications.

If the PC Game you bought uses StarForce protection it may not indicate this on the box. It will simply install the StarForce driver as part of the game installation routine and the user remains blissfully unaware that the driver has been installed until the game is started up. If the driver turns out to be incompatibility with your operating system the game will not run and a screen popup message may appear saying that the Driver has not been started because its not compatible. This was the case recently when a game was installed on a Windows 7 32bit system. Un-installing the game will NOT uninstall the StarForce Protection Driver!

There has been lots of articles about malicious activity and potential damage done to optical drive by these StarForce Protection drivers. As yet we have not found a computer where an optical drive appears to have been damaged by this.

Guidance for using a StarForce protection Driver Game

Our recommendations are:

1. If the driver fails and you are desperate to run the game then persevere with trying to find a working Patch. At this point we don't think you will find one that works for Vista or Windows 7 both 32 and 64 bits! You can use the driver removal steps below to un-install the driver, (which we know works on Vista and Windows 7)
2. Avoid using any games that use the StarForce Protection Driver.

Is the StarForce Protection driver on your computer?

1. May have had a screen message on boot uo saying that the StarForce driver was not started as its not compatible with the operating system (Vista / Windows 7)
2. Right Click on My Computer and go to properties .
3. Select device manager from tab (on the right hand menu Vista/Windows 7)
4. From the View menu 'Show Hidden Devices'
5. Under the 'Non-Plug and Play Drivers' , check to see if the StarForce Protection driver is there or not

Remove StarForce Protection driver methods

• Remove from the Device manager by right clicking on it and selecting 'Uninstall'.
• Download the removal kit from here
• For the list of games which install StarForce click here

Satisfying the Children!

Please note that this article about removing a StarForce Protection driver only came about because we had a problem with a particular game that a 10 year old wanted to play on his computer, (Toca Race Driver 2). As at 12th December 2010, we could not for life of us find an update for Starforce that actually worked despite what the StarForce web site said!!! We ended up taking the game back to the shop and getting a refund and purchasing a driving game that did not use the StarForce protection system. Too much hassle witha  StarForce protected game for my liking.