Aion News wrote:- After analyzing our open beta test results Aion will not feature GameGuard at launch. We will however continue to pursue ways to effectively utilize GameGuard within Aion in the future. Right now we're focused on providing players with the best possible Aion experience.
http://na.aiononline.com/en/news/aion-l ... ion-1.html
Good riddance.
So with that in mind, how does one remove the rootkit-ish remnants of GameGuard (which still contain a security vulnerability from 4 years ago)? Worth noting there is no point doing any of this until it is patched out (or Aion will just re-download and re-install Gameguard automatically).
The following is purloined from here with some updates.
1/ Browse to the install folder of the original game, locate the 'Game Guard' folder and delete it:
* For Steam installs, this will be "<SteamFolder>/steamapps/common/aion/bin32/GameGuard/"
* For other installs it will be "<AionFolder>/bin32/GameGuard/"
2/ Make sure you can view hidden system files, and locate the following files:
npptnt2.sys
nppt9x.vxd
GameMon.des (Vista/Windows 7 only?)
These are located in "Windows/System32/" (for Windows XP) or "Windows/SysWOW64/" (for Vista/Windows 7).
3/ The next part is the tricky part as it involves editing the registry - if you don't know what you are doing... don't. Go wrong here and you could render your operating system unusable, so be careful. It might be a good idea to create a system restore point before going further.
- Run regedit.
- Browse to the following branch: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\SYSTEM\\CurrentControlSet\\Services\\NPPTNT2
- Remove the entire branch.
Alternatively, on Vista/Windows 7, you can just do the following:
- Run "cmd" as Administrator (right-click on "cmd.exe" and "Run as Administrator")
- Type "sc delete npptnt2", press enter
- Type "sc delete npggsvc", press enter
4/ Reboot and run a rootkit scanner (Sophos, F Secure Blacklight, Avira, whatever you prefer).
