TAGES

Tage logo

General Information

Copy protection by the French company Tages SA in partnership with MPO Technologies. It was found on discs from all over Europe between 2001 to 2010 and came in two versions. One disc check version based around Twin Sectors and another using Online activation.

The Disc check version eventually gained a companion DRM called SolidShield. See its page for details.

Identification

Games with the disc check version can primarily be identified by the presence of a driver on disc that went by many names (including lemsgt.vxd/sys, hwpsgt.vxd/sys, lirsgt.sys and atksgt.sys) and which was later also packed into an executable called TagesSetup. Discs with active protection will also carry metadata in the PVD sector that sometimes collides with the PVD itself. The Online activation version meanwhile can be identified by the presence of an activator called the TAGES Activation Client.

Note that in the presence of SolidShield both of these might be packed in the DLL for said DRM and can be hard to detect. Many discs using one can also have inactive files for the other on disc and in these situations. Checking for the presence of Tages mastering is the easiest way to tell them apart (online activation version won't have data in PVD).

Being a MPO derived technology, disc check Tages can also only be found on discs from them (IFPI L031-L040) or one of their partners (IFPI L063, IFPI LL27 and IFPI LN06).

Dumping

For Redump: Dump it like a normal disc.

For a working dump: See the MDS dumping guide for the disc check version. Servers for the online activation one is down so these games require a crack to work.