I'm Afraid it does. It checks for Nero and Alcohol... So I'm told. Whether detecting these programs influences StarForce in some way, I'm unsure. I think it checks for virtual drives.
No, it does not. StarForce assured us that they are not checking for anything installed on the computer, except for their own drivers of course.
Nowadays, it's hard to find a new computer without a CD or DVD burner, and most of the time, you get Nero in bundle with it. What would be the point of checking the presence of Nero since 95% of the gamers have it ? And anyway, Nero cannot make a working copy of a StarForce protected CD. (by working copy I mean a copy allowing the game to start, installation doesn't care)
I think people say that StarForce checks for virtual drives because when they try to mount an image of a protected game, StarForce asks to use another drive. That's because StarForce wants to use the most compatible drive, the most likely to work well with the protection check. Emulated drives have lots of restrictions... This may as well occur with tho "real" CD drives, if StarForce believes one is better suited for the check than the other one, he'll ask the user to switch the CD.
So, StarForce doesn't work with images mounted on virtual drives, not because it detects the emulation program who created those virtual drives, but because these drives are not compatible. And you'll agree that this is the expected behavior from a protection system.
