sztomcat
Posts: 31
Joined: 3/17/2003 From: Ottawa, ON Canada Status: offline
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Below is the 3 emails I wrote to Erik last night, I think they actually pointed to st. on your end, which is explained here (also what I thought) "several months ago when the new serial number protection system was incorporated into all new Matrixgames patches....the new system would reference known bad numbers and prevent installation of the patch to those installed games. " This makes lots of sense and it's your right to protect your own copy rights. HOWEVER, in my case, NONE of my 3 games are "pirated copies", PERIOD. I already wrote to support@matrixgames.com all my purchase information, including my real name, address and telephone. Actually my whole identity is open to Matrix. Their databse should definitely have my information and it's VERY EASY for them to chek if I did purchase those copies from them. I cannot think up better "documentation" they need in this case to prove the fact that I am the legal owner of those 3 copies. As far as "known bad numbers" is concerned, I also proved that all the serial numbers I use are legal serial numbers matrix provided to me, and I NEVER EVER share those serial numbers with anybody, or install the games in different computers (not even in Vista partition). Even if sb. secretly hacked my PC & stole these numbers for use on other copies & Matrix realiized that (not a likely senario though), I still want to know what they actually found in this situation for my own security concern. What's more,all 3 serial numbers were working fine right after I patched my games. It means when the recent updates were out, my serial numbers were NOT "known bad numbers" on any of the list. Then WHY after a while (I didn't touch the games since I've been playing chess a lot recently), all 3 games suddenly "re-discover" that my serial numbers are "known bad numbers" and took actions?! Please remember: I bought Gary Garisby's World at War and had no problem playing that, but suddenly even the original installation file stopped working?! This is quite different than other 2 games, which original installation file still work today. From technical point of view, If my issue was really due to "known bad numbers", then the only explanation is that "known bad numbers" list is expanding even after recent updates are out and already been applied to my copies, and it kept updating a file on my computer! What's really funny is the "If you had three automobiles that were left unsecured, and each of them ended up with a dead body in it, you would have "some explaining to do" to the police" argument. If you secretly,suddenly, remotely confiscated my cars bought from you and I asked why, do you think you can simply say "sorry but you have dead bodies in your car" and ask your customer to prove he is innocent?! If you claim "you have dead bodies in your car", then where and what are the dead bodies you mean, and how you actually find it in recent months while I am not even driving outside? Besides, game companies are not police at all. Even police are not supposed to confiscate prople's car, claim "each of them ended up with a dead body in it", and then ask people to prove their innocent to get their properties back. If you say this is police from a police state, it might make sense. Anyway, "the new system would reference known bad numbers and prevent installation of the patch to those installed games" not only makes sense, but is also legal and reasonable. Personally I support this kind of protection and I don't even think it's a nuisance to legal users. However, "known bad numbers" should be somewhat public (to people who distribute pirated copies, they would know what numbers are unusable anyway), in case if you wronged sb. or sb. was hacked without realization. Also, any protection check should give the same result after the patch is applied. Dear Sir: I just tried to shutdown Avast Protection (I don't use firewall except Windows Firewall), but still got the same thing. But I did start to use Avast Home Edition recently (Norton gave me too much trouble), so it might cause trouble. I would try this myself: intalling one of the 3 games in my Windows Vista, which also uses Avast now. Probably it would work and it would eliminate the possibility that my serial numbers were on a "black list" as one suggested in Matrix forum. Recently my computer got extremely slow (could not find anything though) after running a while, so I did disable some autoload things.Could you tell me if any Windows startup process/driver/service was needed by your game? My UV still works (it's a boxed version), but WITP got error (just error number, no mention about serial number though) right after I click "play xxxxx", the same as TOAW3. For AWD things are somewhat different, I have to wait until the opening movie is over & then game loading bar reached the end to get the same error message (different error number though) as in TOAW3. Anyway, I will try some things myself according to your advice. Thank you for your kind help. Hi Erik Good and bad news: I tried to uninstall TOAW3 completely, clean registry & reinstall it, stopped my Avast protection. And it worked!! However, then I apply the recent patch, still stopped Avast, this time the same error appeared. I am about to try WitP now, I strongly feel it would work after I install the original copy but would fail after I installed the recent update. However, for AWD, even the first installation would not work What would this tell us if that's the case? I would say it's probably an issue related to your recent-changed serial checking system. Since TOAW3 is out about middle last year, but AWD is later than that, so I would guess you changed the serial checking system and use it on TOAW3 updates as well as new games like AWD. If anything is affecting that mechanism, it only affect recet one. Later I would try this on my Vista partition, that would give us more useful information. As I predicted, The original Witp works now after uninstall/reinstall (this time I didn't bother to clean registry) But, right after I applied the dec 2006 update, the issue happened again.
< Message edited by sztomcat -- 7/4/2007 2:39:27 AM >
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