This thread is here to go over the copy protection scanners that are avalible to you.

Some protection scanners are old now and are not updated anymore while others just keep on getting updated for the newer copy protections. I have included both sorts so that you can see the range of tools around and in the hope that someday the older olds will be updated as well.

For a quick overview of what each scanner can do go here.


Currently in this thread are the following copy protection scanner guides.
A-Ray Scanner Download (Last update May 2005)
ClonyXXL Download (Last update April 2003)
Protection ID (up to version 5.2c) Download (Last update December 2007)
Safedisc Analyser Download (Last update October 2000)
SafeDisc/SecuROM Version Detector Download (Last update October 2002)
SecuromID Download (Last update October 2002)
YaPS Download (Last update November 2001)
BurnOut Download (Last update April 2008)
Protection ID v6.00 Download (Last update February 2008)


To run ClonyXXL properly you will need an ASPI layer installed. One way of doing that can be found here.

I would recommend using latest Protection ID and/or latest BurnOut version as all other scanners aren't developed anymore.

ARay Scanner is a general purpose scanner and will search for a number of different protections on your CD's.

When you start the program up for the first time this will be the first screen that will come up. The top white box is where the CD name will be displayed. The second box is where you can select a different CD drive if you have more than one installed. Finally the other black boxes are where information on your CD will be displayed.


The first thing to do is to go into the options menu. To do this hit the Options button. Here you can set the program to scan files that are larger than 20mb. Normally files that are over 20mb will be video files and things of that nature. Here you can also add ARay Scanner to your contect menu. This means that it will show up when you right click on a file so that you can scan it for copy protection.


Now it is time to insert the CD that you want to check. To change to a different CD drive click on the second drop down window. Once you have inserted the CD you will see the name of the CD appear in the top box and the icon of the CD appear in the left hand corner. As you can see the information in the black boxes has changed to show information about the new CD that has been inserted. Here I have inserted Space Colony into the drive.


The next thing to do is to hit the Scan button. The program will then try to identify the protection on the CD. While it is working the items in the bottom lefthand corner will change as it tries to identify the copy protection. Also in the righthand corner is a countdown timer.


Now the program has finished scanning the CD. As you can see it has found SecuROM 4.85.00.005 on the CD.


That's it for the scanning of the CD. This program does however offer a Sector Scan. Here as you can see it has foud the SecuROM protection but it can't tell the version of it.


If you click on the Scan Directory button you will be taken to a window where you can choose the directory you want to scan.


Once again it will try to find the copy protection in the directory you have choosen. Note the larger countdown number at the bottom on the righthand side. Don't worry this will fly down.


Here you can see that it has found the same copy protection in the program directory as it did on the CD. However as you may notice it has found a different version of it. The version it has found is 4.87.04.0008. This is because the latest patch applied to the game has changed the copy protection version on it.


That's it for the copy protection scanning features of this program.

ClonyXXL is a general purpose scanner and will search for a number of different protections on your CD's.

When you start the program up for the first time this will be the first screen that will come up. Here you need to select your CD Rom drive and drive letter.

When you have finished you need to click the Nachstes Laufwerk button. Don’t worry about this being in German as later we will turn to English.


Once pressed this will be the next screen that comes up. This screen lets you change the drive letter assignment before going into the program. If there are correct then hit yes to continue.


At this point it will ask you to restart the program. You don’t need to restart the computer just re-launch the program again.

Now the proper program will start up. However it will be in German the first time that you start it up. To change it into English, click on the Optionen/ Tools button.


Here you can change the language to English and set a few other options such as changing your CD drives letters and looking at the tracks on the CD. Hit the English Flag and then go to Scan Options.


In here you can change the way that the program scans the CD. I would set it the options to Look For Defective Sectors and scan every sector. You will also want to Scan Hard Drive For SecuRom New/ ProtectCD5/ StarForce 3 and to Scan For Copy Protection. Also you will want to turn on the option to Scan For Dummy Files. Once you have finished click Apply to go back to the main menu.


To close down the side panel with the options in it just click the Options/ Tools button again. Finally all you have to do is click the Scan CD button. This can take between 10 seconds and 30 minutes depending on what protection is on the CD and if the program needs to scan your hard drive as well.


From this picture you can see that the program is trying to find the protection on the CD. you can see how far it has to go by looking at the Progress Bar at the bottom of the screen.


As you can see I used Roller Coaster Tycoon 2 (RCT2) to test the program and it shows that it has SecuROM *new* V 4.83.11.0048 protecting the CD. It also gives you a guide to how hard this CD will be to copy. This is just a guide and with newer drives and software can be wrong.

This will be the first screen that you come to when you load up the program. To look for a copy protection you will first need to hit the Scan button.


Now you will need to locate the file (mostly .exe/.dat files will give the used protection and version) that you use to run the game. If you are searching a CD then this maybe found in a sub directory on the CD or in a sub directory of your installation folder. Once you have found it then hit the Open button.


If there was protection found on the file then it will show up in separate box below.


The MultiScan option can be used to scan more than one file at a time.

This will be the first screen that you come to when you load up the program. To look for the copy protection you will first need to hit the Load button.


Now you will need to locate the file that you use to run the game. If you are searching a CD then this maybe found in a sub directory on the CD. Once you have found it then hit the Open button.


If it asks you for a file with a ICD extension the this normally means you have selected the wrong file to begin with. here is is best to hit the cancel button and try another EXE file.


If there was protection found on the file then it will show up in the empty boxes.

This will be the first screen that you come to when you load up the program. To look for a copy protection you will first need to hit the Open button.


Now you will need to locate the file that you use to run the game. If you are searching a CD then this maybe found in a sub directory on the CD. Once you have found it then hit the Open button.


If there was protection found on the file then it will show up in the empty box at the bottom of the screen.

This will be the first screen that you come to when you load up the program. To look for a copy protection you will first need to hit the Open button.


Now you will need to locate the file that you use to run the game. If you are searching a CD then this maybe found in a sub directory on the CD. Once you have found it then hit the Open button.


If there was protection found on the file then it will show up in the empty box at the bottom of the screen.

This will be the first screen that you come to when you load up the program. To search for a copy protection you will need to enter something in the Drive Or Directory To Scan box or hit the button next to it to browse your computer.


This will be the next window that comes up if you are browsing your computer. Here you need to find and select the directory or CD that you want to check and then hit the OK button.


The directory of drive that you have now selected will be shown in the box. All you have to do now is to hit the Start button.


After the program has scanned the selected areas it will output the protection on the bottom of the screen.


As you can see here this program has only outputted that this protection is SecuROM *NEW*. This is just a guide to what is protecting this CD. If you want to find out the exact version of this protection then you will need to use another program that will give to the exact version number.

This will be the first screen that you come to when you load up the program. To look for a copy protection you will first need to choose your CD/DVD drive which contains the protected Disc via the drop down menu. You can also choose your preferred language (German, English, French).


When you're done hit the scan button and wait until the protection will be displayed which may take some time depending on how fast it can be found.


As you can see Burnout was not able detecting the exact version so we'll search for the game .exe, .dat or .dll file to get an exact result using the Search in file option which can be found in the dropdown menu.


When you got the file in this case the BF2.exe is protected click the Scan button and wait for the result.

There's a new option called advanced scan (use Evore) the description is quoted from the changelog:

Since Protection ID v5 many things have been changed in the new version which is called Protection ID v6. I'm using the the xmas preview for this guide so it may differ from the final release as it's a beta version.
You also have to notice that PiD isn't 'just' a protection scanner anymore it's a little tool with many useful features you've to explore yourself and I will just concentrate on two options which are marked red in the screenshots.


This will be the first screen that you come to when you load up the program.


To look for a copy protection you will first need to drag and drop the file, multiple files or even whole folders which you want to scan in the black scan window (I scanned the whole Battlefield 2 folder via drag and drop).


As I scanned the whole Battlefield 2 folder which has about 2800 files (took me about 2 minutes) and didn't tick the Log Filter option I got the results of all scanned files. Now I click on the second button in the upper left corner and get the Protection Report which lists all protections that PiD has found. In this case SafeDisc 4.50.000 is the used protection.


p.s. I would recommend to install the game/software and then scan for the used protection in the installation folder but you can also scan the disc using the drag and drop method with single files, multiple files, folders, etc..