New SB Live! drivers and DRM

[Mekadave 0]

I downloaded the new Live! drivers for Win2k/XP last night (saw the link on Blues). For the heck of it, I decided to look through the EULA for sneaky stuff. I normally look through EULAs that come with apps for that, but since Microsoft stuck that Digital Rights Management crap in the Media Player patch, I've become more suspicious. You wouldn't think there would be anything in device drivers, right? Wrong. Down at the bottom of the EULA, the new drivers now conform with MS DRM. (I'm at work now, so I can't copy/paste it, sorry) IIRC, they'll cut off the digital port if you try to play encrypted material through a MS DRM-compliant app, such as WMP.

[DosFreak 2]

Well,well,well. They are actually doing it. Sigh. I guess I'll start text-scanning every time I download anything now.

 

(I'm already doing research for a game scanner that'll scan for specific prog languages,memory stubs,engine vers). Guess I'll add common DRM strings to my list.

 

 

We should start up a Will not buy if it's DRM poll.

[Uykucu 0]

I will just use the old drivers for the moment and avoid SB live if they insist on this nonsense...

[Davros 0]

Just use the old drivers, they work great. Even better, just avoid WMP, there are loads of other, better players anyway.

[Uykucu 0]

Nver used WMP anyway

I love my Winamp.

[Admiral LSD 0]

I couldn't care less about this DRM **** so I installed these drivers anyway and now I'm being prompted by Windows Update that their WDM set are newer (presumably because these Creative ones don't report a valid version number on my box). How do I stop this?

[Mekadave 0]

Progress report:

 

Well, starting the day after (yesterday), I started getting PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGEDAREA BSODs on boot. I couldn't successfully boot til I went to safe mode. I uninstalled the new driver set, went back to the next most recent drivers, and guess what? No more BSODs. These new drivers (and DRM) are bad news.

 

Oh, that reminds me. After I installed the WMP security patch, I get the exact same BSOD whenever I try to run, uninstall, or even DELETE WinMX, which worked fine for weeks before. This DRM stuff sucks. I'll sign a petition if you get one going.

[Admiral LSD 0]

I'm having no major issues (apart from the Windows Update thing) here and I have the WMP Security Patch installed, no BSODs, no nothing.

[Mekadave 0]

Do you use WinMX? I'm curious to know if that's happening to anyone else. I'm using (or at least WAS using) the latest version, 3.22.

[Admiral LSD 0]

WinMX worked flawlessly(I tried it after reading your post hence the comment about no BSODs). I've since uninstalled the Creative drivers and went back to the WDM ones since the Creative ones caused my kernel memory usage to double for some reason not to mention one of the programs the Creative tools installs (the splash screen thingy) caused it to blow out as well.