Windows XP 'debugger detected' error

Factual Questions
1

Hopefully, this is a fairly simple question.

After more than a month without a computer at home, I finally broke down and bought a new one. After going through some hassles of getting XP registered (is a 54-digit ID number really necessary? How many copies is MS planning to sell?), everything seemed ready to roll.

Not quite.

I installed two games (Civ III and The Sims), and when I tried to start either of them, I got the following error:

“Debugger detected: Unload the Debugger and try again.”

Huh?

My two biggest problems in fixing this are that a) this is the first time I’ve used XP and I’m not familiar with the layout, and b) it’s in Japanese (the error message was in English, though).

If anyone knows where the debugger is located and how it can be unloaded for an English system, I should be able to trace my way through the Japanese.

Thank you very much in advance.

p.s. My computer is completely offline right now. No LAN, no internet, nothing. Also, I don’t think it’s a language conflict between the games and the OS, as my previous OS (Windows Me) was also Japanese and the games worked fine.

2

ME is not an NT-based OS, but XP is. You may be out of luck–I know that The Sims is not guaranteed to run on NT.

3

The Sims, at least in newer releases, is certified on XP. In my experience, Civ III runs just fine in 2K and should work with XP too.

4

Google says this is caused by the Safedisk copy protection scheme. Now, to crack a program (as in, no-cd cracks), ideally you want to examine its code whilst it runs. Safedisk apparently is a bit overzealous in “identifying” debuggers, and has IDed your installation of DirectX 9 beta as being a debugger.
(Vote “NO” for dumb copy protection schemes!)

Not sure about fixes. Try upgrading to the DX 9.0a release version.

5

Thanks Nanoda, I’ll give that a try when I get home tonight.

6

FYI Update: Problem found and fixed.

After doing a few more Google searches, I found that a lot of people were having trouble because of one of the sound controllers that would open at startup. Going into msconfig and disabling three of the files connected with it got rid of the problem.