Top Tip! How to Remove Starforce from your PC
Hi guys , this article will tell you how to remove starforce protection driver from your PC
What is Starforce
Starforce is a software copy protection tool installed by PC game publishers, which is designed to prevent the casual copying of retail CDROM applications. It installs as a hidden device driver, without the user’s knowledge
The Problem
Starforce has received criticism for installing its own device driver onto computers. The Starforce drivers are often linked to system instability and computer crashes. If these problems occur, the user would be unware as to the cause of the problem, and would be helpless to solve the problem.
for example under Windows XP, if packets are lost during the reading or writing of a disk, XP interprets this as an error and steps the IDE speed down. Eventually it will revert to 16bit compatibility mode rendering a CD/DVD writer virtually unusable. In some circumstances certain drives cannot cope with this mode and it results in physical hardware failure (Most commonly in multiformat CD/DVD writer drives). A sure sign of this step down occurring is that the burn speeds will get slower and slower (no matter what speed you select to burn at). Starforce, on a regular basis, triggers this silent step down. Until it reaches the latter stages most people do not even realise it is happening.
It has been reported by many users that the slowdown caused by StarForce on some recent multiformat DVD writers can cause irreversible hardware failures on those drives (they aren’t recognized anymore), as they aren’t supposed to write at slow speeds.
How to confirm whether Starforce is in your comp
- Right Click on My Comp and go to properties .
- Select device manager from the hardware tab
- From the view menu ” Show Hidden Devices “
- Under the nonplug and play device , check whether starforce is there or not
The Removal
1)Directly Remove from the Device manager by removing the device .
2)Download the removal kit from here
For the list of games which install starforce click here
thanx..for the info… great yaaar….
Wow, thanks man. I don’t think SF is there in XP but very very useful info. Wonderful post.
SF gets installed with the various latest games and sometimes the demos also . I faced various problems with starforce and thats why did a lot of reserch on it .
Is it called SFI Service? If so its present in my comp
No it will be with the name of StarForce Protection environment .
Dude you had said on my blog that you credits dont seem to increase. You do know that you got to browse using the surf blogs option after logging in right.
very useful info…thanks
[...] How to Remove Starforce from your PC [...]
Thanks! Good resourse!
thank you so much for that!
I’ve been fighting with starfarse trying to remove it from my computer without success, the removal tool claimed there’s nothing to remove. Then it turned out sf was hidden in the hidden devices and it required to boot up quite a few times before uninstalling it for good, but it worked! Finally, thanks for all the help
plz help i got this software on flaming cliffs game and i dunno what to do??
This is a sheet. I work in Techno eJay 5 and have a this fucking protection.So I use only to create a song in 70 sec. There is no way to remowe this protection….
Nice one, the cocks that wrote Starforce deserve to be burned alive
This is a cool idea but unfortunately the only way to get this piece of shit off your machine is to use the removal tool on StarForce’s website. Even manually trawling through the registry and attempting to re-assign ownership of your own registry entries is protected they truely are the biggest tossers in the software business do not buy any game with their shit all over it
Does this mean I can play a game with Starforce Protection, like Killswitch, then remove Starforce and all will be fine? Can I remove it right after I install the game?
Wow if i could i would give you a star!!
thanks to this
i have FINALLY got rid of the annoying pop up thingy that says starforce not compatible that has been bugging me for months.
thanks
Here is my question. I am trying to run Silent Hunter III on windows 7 RC 32-bit. I keep gitting three pop-up saying the star force driver is incompatible. I ran the removal tool and also the update tool. Neither worked. I called Ubi soft support…useless! I know the program will run on Vista 32-bit so it should run on 7. What would you suggest at this point?
You saved my liiiife. I was tired of Sf popup. Easy to follow instruccions. Thanks a lot
Ive found starforce on device manager and ive uninstaled them but the problem still exists, and even the tool for removin starforce wont help!!!! anyone has any idea?
p.s. sorry for my bad english (:
Thnx, it helped to remove the pop-up.
hello, i bought it and installed Curse: eye of the isis on my vista computer. the problem is say that it is copy protected. please help me , i cant play my game.
I have also this liitle problem with this driver, it was turning on tvice every time on computer start. And afer i visit STAR FORCE web site, and download a driver remover, everithing was fine. Thanks sorm informatio how to solute the problem.
I HAD THE SAME PROBLEM. TRY THIS, IT WORKED FOR ME:
How to remove all the protection components from the system?
To remove all protection components:
Download the zip-archive of the SFREMOVE utility.
http://www.star-force.com/support/sfdrvrem.zip
Unpack the archive and save the sfdrvrem.exe file to some folder on a hard disk.
Run sfdrvrem.exe.
Follow the displayed instructions
my boyfriend installed toca and it appeared this annoying window with starforce:)
it was very succesful you guide and i removed it with no problems.thank you very much;)
hi, thanks for help! i was repairing my friend’s pc with vista… and vista always said that star force is incompatible driver, so it’s blocked, BUT still it reports problem with this star force driver after each pc start! so i tryed use this article remove method x-times, but it still reports problem with compatibility with star force each system start so finaly i found at device manager (after use Show Hidden Devices) what refer to the star force drivers… and it was file C:\windows\system32\drivers\sfhlp02.sys – removed of this file didn”t help so i removed all sf*** files – sffdisk.sys, sffp_mmc.sys, sffp_sd.sys, sfhlp02.sys, sfloppy.sys, sfvfs02.sys and one more, but i lost the name – AND IT WORK, NO STAR FORCE AT PC