Windows 7 doesn't start after installing a game with StarForce protection
From StarForce – the ultimate evil :
No big deal, boot up in safe mode and delete the problematic drivers, right? No such luck, StarForce had even managed to install these broken drivers in safe mode.
Next stop, the Vista installation disk, which has a repair feature. The repair went as expected, showed success, but when I tried to reboot, the problem was still there.
Luckily I had a Knoppix Live-CD lying around from some old experiments, and this was able to boot the machine into linux. A couple of driver downloads later I was able to access the files on the main hard drive, and delete the offending StarForce drivers by hand, which fixed the problem.
List of drivers from How can I get rid of Starforce? :
Unofficial way to remove Starforce
Remove these files:
%SystemRoot%\system32\drivers\sfsync03.sys
%SystemRoot%\system32\drivers\sfhlp02.sys
%SystemRoot%\system32\drivers\sfdrv01.sysRemove these registry keys:
HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\sfsync03
HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\sfhlp02
HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\sfdrv01