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Comments 6

liveshawn February 6 2006, 19:43:58 UTC
Sorry to keep following you around, groping you, spamming you...

But do you use any particular IM client on a semi-regular basis? If so, could you help me find true love?

(By that I mean, would you be willing to help me configure a cheap-yet-sweet computer? Consider me the putty that you can mold with your salty, salty hands!)

I'll love you forever?

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theunshaven February 6 2006, 21:02:40 UTC
What's it do?

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vektortgecko February 6 2006, 23:05:50 UTC
well, from accounts given, it installs its own set of IDE drivers to monitor what you're doing with your drives.

These happen to cause slow degradation in CD/DVD-ROM performance and eventually causes the computer to stop recognizing the CD/DVD-ROM as a DMA drive, and shift back to legacy PIO (Programmed I/O, aka "slow" or "old") mode. At which point the drive thinks it's constantly in "overburn" mode, which can cause the laser enclosure in the drive to go a little further outward than it should. This can cause the laser to smack into parts of the internal CD/DVD-ROM frame and damage the worm gear that drives it.

There have also been accounts of it causing S.M.A.R.T. errors (possibly related to corruption of HDD firmware)

It also breaks legitimate software which it considers "bad", such as Nero, Daemontools, etc. (as I understand)

Mattface claims it can also contribute to system slowdown and/or instability in some cases.

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accer February 7 2006, 03:20:56 UTC
Wow, I'm actually in a position to do something about this directly. Research, I shall.

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vektortgecko February 7 2006, 05:57:24 UTC
Take it with a grain of salt, of course.
I don't any of this software myself, so I can't PERSONALLY verify it (nor would I want to with my hardware). But on the other hand, a lot of similar reports probably shouldn't be ignored either.

The biggest issue I've had with this sort of thing myself, personally, is false positives, where the copy protection software won't recognize that a legit CD is inserted even when it is, and I'm forced to resort to products of software pirates in order to crack my legitimate software so I can use it.

This just caught my eye because I've never heard of it actually causing damage on this sort of scale before.

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thelala February 7 2006, 04:17:59 UTC
Applause to Matty. That seems to be a common theme among copy protection measures. The only times that entering in keys has slowed me down was when I lost the keys to go with software I had actually paid for.

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