If you haven't heard about this yet or haven't read it yourself, go out and pick up the April 2006 (#261) issue of Computer Gaming World. Not only is it a good gaming mag but it has a real interesting article about Starforce. In fact, the cover has a tag line that reads "Special Report: Are games installing spyware on your pc?"
A few tidbits from the article on page 28:
"In an effort to bring clarity to these accusations, we turned to CGW's own desktop administrator, Nick Kalister, for a full technical report of what Starforce can (and can't) do to you PC. 'Starforce doesn't directly trash your drives or your IDE controller channels,' he explains. 'It can, however, cause Windows to step down to programmed input/output [PIO] mode, which could possibly damage some optical drives if they run in that mode for an extended period of time.'"
"Kalister also points out: '[Although] Starforce is not a virus, it can act as a possible Trojan gateway, as malicious third-party applications could conceivably exploit its security holes to gain [system administrator] access.'"
"Sure enough, an extended test using a 4x Memorex DVD-RW drive and a retail copy of Ubisoft's Splinter Cell Chaos Theory proved it, as the drive's burn speed eventually dropped to a paltry 1x-only to return to its original speed once we removed the Starforce program."
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I am amazed by all of the posts over the internet still saying "nonesense", "rubbish", "show me the proof". What more would you like? What proof do you need? An independent test from a computer game magazine's IT department put it in print. The proof you are talking about must be "disbelieve anything until it happens to me." Well, no one is ever going to be able to do that.
The other thing I see over and over is "It's Windows NOT Starforce that steps your drive down to PIO mode." This is about the lamest argument I have seen to date. Here is an exact analogy. I write software and I create an application that steps on system memory causing a blue screen. This happens in almost every situation. When asked about why my application causes a blue screen, I just say it's Windows NOT my application that causes the blue screen. What kind of argument is that? As a side note, we write software FOR Windows. Windows wasn't written for your software to run on. Windows existed first and we create and tailor our software to run on THAT platform, not the other way around. If it were, then yeah, Windows would be the problem.