Y U NO Load no more? [Solved]

[Bdub01 201]

It’s been a long time since I’ve been on here. So I’ve played SimCity 4 with no problem on my computer. Now I click on the icon and it doesn’t even try to load. I have the old school discs and an acer with windows vista or xp I’m not entirely sure. When I trouble check it for compatibility it says I need to sign in as administrator but I’m already signed in as administrator. I just don’t know why the game just quit playing. Any help would be appreciated. 

[SIM-ple Jack 17,444]

Mine does that from time to time. I hit the "Shut Down" button on my comp, let the Closing window come up and hit cancel. Everything's back to normal. Don't know what causes it, but it's usually after I stream something.

[Bdub01 201]

Never mind. I had to uninstall KB3086255

[rsc204 21,804]

Yes and No. This update for Win Vista through Win 8.1 systems does disable the driver SecDrv.sys, which handles the DRM for games like SC4. In other words, without the driver it can't validate your disk as genuine.

However, with that said, the reason for the update is because that very same driver has been found to have flaws in its security that can compromise your system. So simply removing the patch, may not be the best idea. The instructions here, show how to set things up so when you run SC4, it briefly activates the driver, then once it's validated the disk, disables it again. The difference being, this way your system doesn't have a well-known security hole continually active.

Bear in mind also, assuming this is Windows 7, MS changed how updates work a few years back. Meaning if you don't have the specific KB fix applied, it will be included in the next monthly roll-up you install on your machine. Of course this may not be a problem, since there are no updates since Jan and probably never will be again. But if you suddenly were to install such an update in future, despite not having the mentioned KB fix, it would once again disable the driver.

[Max4k 721]

From time to time Ive seen the game get hung up at launch and does not launch, but it's running.  I kill the process in Windows Task Manager and re-launch the game and it works.

[rsc204 21,804]

10 hours ago, Max4k said:

From time to time Ive seen the game get hung up at launch and does not launch, but it's running.  I kill the process in Windows Task Manager and re-launch the game and it works.

Which means you are definitely not suffering from the removal of SecDrv.sys, because SC4 (disk versions only), can not start without it.

This happening intermittently suggests a lack of resources causing startup to fail sometimes. Try shutting any other applications, rather than keeping them in the background whilst playing SC4. A web browser with multiple open tabs can be a huge resource hog these days.

[Max4k 721]

I currently don't have any issues, but when first starting out I did.  Finally made backup of disk w/ Daemon tools and just mount it now