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Not exactly a business issue, but I thought I'd mention it...

Posted: Mon Sep 14, 2015 9:50 am
by Alan Kirk
Most of what happens in TM1 Forum naturally has a business leaning, but we do (it may surprise some to hear) have a slightly geekish leaning contingent who use computers recreationally as well as professionally. For those who are in that category, you may have noticed that some of your older disk-based games (Rome Total War I, Flight Simulator X to name but two) have suddenly stopped working. In some cases (RTW) they will show a bogus error about how you need to "Please login with administrator privileges and try again". In others (FSX) it will just freeze at the splash screen.

MS Support is chronically clueless about the cause and will simply stick their hand out for money for a support contract.

The reason, I found after much digging, is that magick-word "Securiteeee". One may never question Securiteeee. Securiteeee is the unquestionable god for the 21st century.

Specifically, Microsoft screwed the DRM that was used by these older games. In Win 7 and 8 it was done by a Windows Update, in Windows 10 it's screwed natively. In Windows 7 and 8 there is a hack workaround. In Windows 10 there is not:

http://myonlinesecurity.co.uk/september ... any-games/

Now, I can see why Microsoft did this. But what is not acceptable, what is the polar opposite of acceptable, is the way that they completely failed to give people adequate warning that some of their software was about to break and, in the case of Windows 10 upgraders, break never to run again. Upgrading Windows and allowing Windows Update to run unfettered is a matter of trust. Terminating our ability to run some of the software that we bought our computers to run was not part of that deal.

I ended up re-purchasing the affected software on Steam, only because the whole "find the disk and pop it in" thing was tedious anyway, especially on the notebook which has no built in optical drive. But I am still not impressed.

In any case, if you start getting BS error messages on DRM-infected... sorry, that should read "protected" {thinks about the way DRM screws legitimate users and doesn't even slow piracy...}, no, I was right the first time, DRM-infected disks... well, now y'all know why.

Re: Not exactly a business issue, but I thought I'd mention it...

Posted: Mon Sep 14, 2015 11:50 am
by jim wood
This is the reason why I have 2 PC's. One for MS and Wow and one for everything else. The everything else PC will never see windows 10. Alan it's way forward:

1) You get to build 2 PC's
2) You get to build 2 PC's......