They were used left and right, but they were honestly not that big a deal, worst case scenario I can remember was that they were always causing me issues with imaging software, if Alcohol 120% or Daemon Tools were installed for example, some games would not allow me to run them at all. I hate DRM as a principle with a passion. But all thing considered, and when you compare it to online distribution nowadays and the required usage of clients, Safedisc and SecuROM were pretty tame.

StarForce was seriously on another level though, the modern day counterpart would have to be DENUVO, but even that can't hold a candle to StarForce and just how invasive that was.

tldr; I've never had to reinstall WinXP because of Safedisc and/or SecuROM. I've come close to doing it because of StarForce. Even so, if the PC you've built is solely for a few games, even if by some unlucky strike of fate you have to format and reinstall, is it really that bad?

You're going to see alot of opinions but very little facts and then you'll get the DRM lovers who like to defend it for some reason (Probably trying to protect their stock). What I have experienced personally:
I crack all my purchased games so the only times I experienced most of the below were mainly due to game demos (yeah) since I test alot of games.

1 Right-click delayed in explorer delayed to a significant amount and/or explorer crashes due to buggy shell handler. (SecuROM)
2 Unable to delete 16bit executables due to buggy shell handler in 9x+ (SecuROM)
3 Unable to launch your game when CD burning or emulation software were installed
4 CD drives disappear due to filter drive, Have to reboot to "fix" (SafeDisc)
5 Multiple versions of the same DRM software installed causing who knows what issues.
6 Inability to have common debugging tools running on your computer.
7 Unable to backup your games without using cracks. (This depends on DRM version, tools, Depending how much time you have in some cases you can back them up)
8 Game not working do to new OS that is incompatible with the DRM and game was never patched to update the DRM or remove it.
9 Unable to play games due to activation limit or Internet is down so unable to activate.
10 Yet another piece of software that causes vulnerabilities on your computer.

As far as if any of the above is an issue depends on how many games, how much you use the computer, how often you reimage (Base with no DRM installed), etc.

DosFreak wrote:

1 Right-click delayed in explorer to a significant amount due to buggy shell handler (SecuROM)

I wonder if the delayed response to shortcut keys assigned to desktop icons can also be blamed on that software; I experience it now and then on every XP system (but not on Vista or later). 🤣

OT: a while ago I had a Valve game running in one window and a programming environment in the other, and was occasionally toggling between them. Then when I tried to compile the program I was working on, I couldn't. The generated executable was locked. When I went to see what was locking it, it was the Steam client. I had to shut down the game and Steam to carry on working. Has this happened to anyone else?

Early SecuROM was ok, it's the later one that's terrible with the Starforce-like mandatory backdoor service installation and whatnot. Those denuvo complainers haven't lived through those days. 🙄

EdmondDantes wrote:

Can potential problems be circumvented with fairly simple precautions (if they're even necessary) or am I better off just avoiding any DRM-laced game altogether?

Make an image of your hard drive as soon as you have it set up the way you want -- before installing any games on it.
That way if you have any problems you can restore from the image.

You mentioned uninstallers for DRM, but these can be version specific, and the original SecuROM-removal tool from Sony installed other cr@p instead of just uninstalling the SecuROM. They may have released a "clean" uninstaller by now, but I wouldn't trust them and I'd rather just re-image the drive.

Unfortunately GOG doesn't have all older games, and the only available version of a game may be a DRM-crippled disc version.
So avoiding all DRM-crippled games means you might not be able to play all the games you want.
And playing the games you want is the whole purpose of the computer.
Having a backup image is a good idea anyway.

skitters wrote:

Unfortunately GOG doesn't have all older games, and the only available version of a game may be a DRM-crippled disc version.
So avoiding all DRM-crippled games means you might not be able to play all the games you want.

Usually these games have cracks which effectively disable (remove?) the DRM.

dr_st wrote:

skitters wrote:

Unfortunately GOG doesn't have all older games, and the only available version of a game may be a DRM-crippled disc version.
So avoiding all DRM-crippled games means you might not be able to play all the games you want.

Usually these games have cracks which effectively disable (remove?) the DRM.

The problem is that you need to install the game first before you can apply a patch or crack, which will install the copy protection, too. Unless there is a way around that 😀

I guess that it's possible that some of these pirated "repacks" address this issue as well...

So here's how I've got my comp set up right now:

It dual-boots Win98 and WinXP using Plop Boot Manager (which I learned about from googling old posts here on Vogons) and is setup so that 98 and XP each aren't even aware the other partition exists, but there is a general "data" partition both can see.

I'm wondering if it might be possible/recommended to create a third partition, which would also be XP, but for it to be where I install anything with DRM (and thus be the least-customized). Or would that just be doing too much work?

Also would that shared data partition that both OSes can see be in any danger or would DRM-protected games only affect the C drive?

EdmondDantes wrote:

I'm wondering if it might be possible/recommended to create a third partition, which would also be XP, but for it to be where I install anything with DRM (and thus be the least-customized). Or would that just be doing too much work?

Also would that shared data partition that both OSes can see be in any danger or would DRM-protected games only affect the C drive?

You are thinking (and fearing) too much of it.

DRM does not impose any danger to any of your data. Most of the time, the side effects, if they exist are very benign. DosFreak's list is probably the worst of it, and even that does not put any of your data at risk.

Making a special partition for installing DRM-controlled games only makes sense if you are installing a completely independent WinXP there (so you have two WinXP installations). Using it just to install the games in an existing XP system makes no sense, because the DRM modifies your system files and settings, regardless of where the game itself is installed to.

Just get a proper backup system. Even if copy protection doesn't do anything bad, something else still might.

XP was fine with safedisk for me. The problems started when the behind-the-scenes drivers wouldn't be accepted by Vista or 7. Some games I had failed to launch because safedisk drivers failed or were not installed due to conflicts with Windows. The publisher for one (GT Legends, and presumably all SimBin games from that era) ended up sending DRM-free versions to people if they proved they had a disked copy of the game. I've got it saved on my HDD still.

So here's my current thoughts:

I'm thinking I could either

A) Like mentioned previously, a second XP partition that can't see (or be seen by) any of the other partitions. I'd call this the "quarantine" partition.

B) Inspired by a previous topic I could also just use one of these hard drive caddy things and physically swap out my current HD for one I don't mind borking--probably still calling it "the Quarantine drive."

Or I could just decide all these measures are overkill. I haven't made up my mind yet.

More OS partitions and/or drives complicate many backup solutions, both in terms of the backup process itself and the recovery process.

Plus you now have more things that can go wrong. You have two XP installations that you might have to reinstall when something bad happens.

Option B should introduce you to another better option. Just remove your HDD whenever you're not using it and clone it to another drive. That's a perfect backup. No need to maintain two separate XP installations, just recover from backup whenever something goes wrong.

Of course live backups can be kept more easily up to date and might be less work, but you increase the chance of something going wrong. Not from copy protection of course, but from malware that might attempt to wipe your backups.

Yes this should be a backup discussion. That's the only correct approach to the problem you're presenting.

No-CD patches are the way to go. These so called "copy protections" do absolutely nothing other than being annoying. Do you actually like having to insert the CD then wait for both the optical unit to settle and wait on the splash screen before the thing even launches? I don't. There are other reasons:

http://aluigi.altervista.org/patches/nocd.txt

Personally, I especially appreciate the fact that someone already went and made a particular game debugger friendly so the more technically versed fans of the game have an easier time fixing bugs. Some games are incredibly buggy.

Any suggestions for how to back up these hard drives? I've never really done HD imaging before--for me a backup has always been "make sure anything absolutely irreplacable (obscure downloads, personal writing, etc) is on a CD-R or other hard drive somewhere."

I myself like Acronis TrueImage, but it isn't free.

EdmondDantes wrote:

Any suggestions for how to back up these hard drives? I've never really done HD imaging before--for me a backup has always been "make sure anything absolutely irreplacable (obscure downloads, personal writing, etc) is on a CD-R or other hard drive somewhere."

Well, a backup strategy needs to be formed around how up to date you require backups to be, what sort of content you're attempting to back up and what sort of failures you're expecting to have to recover from.

If all you're trying to do is have a recoverable XP install in case copy protection messes up you can probably just do an online, up to date backup. I know someone who uses Acronis True Image and whenever software messes up his computer, he just reverts his system state back a week.

Not that I can recommend Acronis True Image, since I do not use it personally. My own backup strategy is more simple: very occasional dd clones of OS drive so I don't have to change a ton of settings whenever I reinstall and copies of all important files done more frequently (but still kept offline).