How to play Silent Hunter III without the DVD in the DVD Drive
Later editions of Silent Hunter III come without a starforce installation, however those who bought the game in its early release life have starforce included in the game install and this does for many cause problems.
For this reason please find below guidance on removing the starforce installation from the game allowing you to avoid these issues and play without the DVD in the drive.
Uninstall Silent Hunter III - this uninstall will not delete starforce so you will need another program to complete removal. Starforce have an official removal tool which you can find HERE
Searching your windows task manager will not find any starforce programs, you will need to do a web search for archive rld-sh14.rar or search for Silent hunter 3 v1.4b No DVD/Fixed exe to get the archive.
In the archive you will find 5 data sets (SH3.EXE, MISSIONENGINE.DLL, SIMDATA.DLL, UTILS.DLL & STATEMACHINE.DLL)
Once the above is complete install SH III again, and take the DVD out of the DVD Drive
Do NOT play the game after installation
Now you will need to patch the game, patch 1.4. Ensure you install the correct patch i.e. EMEA-DVD, EMEA-DL, US-DVD, US-DL (see here)
Do NOT open the game after this process
Now copy the 5 data sets into the main menu of your Silent Hunter III installation.
That’s it; you can now play Silent Hunter III starforce free
Important note: This method will prevent you from running any other games which require starforce.