Gosh darn it! That blessed Securom! GAH!!!

Anyway, I did what I should have done years ago and bought my own copy of The Sims 2 base game so I could install all that shiz on my netbook instead of having to use the family PC, which always has someone staring over my shoulder while I'm trying to work. I was careful to not buy the double deluxe or whatever it's called and get a second-hand copy of the old bog standard DVD edition. Before installing I also checked online for any references to its having SuckyROM and checked the back of the disc for the Sony DADC, which was not present. Anyway, after buying OFB (again, second-hand: screw EA if they think I'm putting money into SHERRIE DANDAN'S pocket), I thought, EA sucks, let me double-check my registry just in case. And lo and behold, that old enemy of mine was now on my new netbook!

I was like, "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! They've got me again, nooooooooo!". But really, I was stumped as to how the hell that crap got onto my netbook, considering how careful I'd been. If the base-game was clear (and at this point I had only installed Uni and Nightlife, which I had been safely using on the family PC, so I knew they were clear), how in the heck did that malware get installed? The only games I have on here are Baldur's Gate (which I've also used safely on the old PC), Heroes III Complete (ditto), Tropico (which doesn't even have a disc-check to run), Icewind Dale (also no SuckyROM detected after I installed that) and the Sierra city-building games.

Ahhhh! There's the culprit I think. Pharaoh and Zeus are clear, but Emperor... I assumed that since there was no Sony DADC on the disc, and because I bought the Sold Out version, the game would be clean. But I knew that they did use SuckyROM on Caesar IV, and a bit of Interweb searching reveals that, on the original release of Emperor anyway, SecuROM was bundled with the game. So I am assuming that that is when that crap got on to my netbook.

Game uninstalled and disc to never enter my DVD drive again.