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NicknineTheEagl's avatar
NicknineTheEagl
7 years ago
Solved

Need for Speed Undercover - Windows XP launch issue

Got re-directed here by EA Support, said they're looking into this issue and will post here once the fix is found. Basically, the problem is that NFS: Undercover does not work on Windows XP showing ...
  • NicknineTheEagl's avatar
    NicknineTheEagl
    2 years ago

    Aw, jeez, I figured it out. Before activation, paul.dll checks if you're connected to the internet and it does that in a really lame way by sending HTTP GET request to http://www.ea.com. Problem is, that website has long since moved to HTTPS with mandatory TLS 1.2 and Windows XP does not have TLS 1.2 support so the request fails completely and the code throws the error message from the OP.

    I got around that by hex editing paul.dll and replacing http://www.ea.com with http://google.com (Google still has legacy version with insecure HTTP) but it seems that EA's activation server (https://proxy.novafusion.ea.com) has stopped working on Windows XP as well since I've posted this so not even version 1.0.1.17 activates anymore.

    So I got around THAT issue by further hex editing paul.dll and changing https://proxy.novafusion.ea.com to http://proxy.novafusion.ea.com (HTTPS to HTTP). Thanks, EA.

NicknineTheEagl's avatar
NicknineTheEagl
2 years ago

Aw, jeez, I figured it out. Before activation, paul.dll checks if you're connected to the internet and it does that in a really lame way by sending HTTP GET request to http://www.ea.com. Problem is, that website has long since moved to HTTPS with mandatory TLS 1.2 and Windows XP does not have TLS 1.2 support so the request fails completely and the code throws the error message from the OP.

I got around that by hex editing paul.dll and replacing http://www.ea.com with http://google.com (Google still has legacy version with insecure HTTP) but it seems that EA's activation server (https://proxy.novafusion.ea.com) has stopped working on Windows XP as well since I've posted this so not even version 1.0.1.17 activates anymore.

So I got around THAT issue by further hex editing paul.dll and changing https://proxy.novafusion.ea.com to http://proxy.novafusion.ea.com (HTTPS to HTTP). Thanks, EA.

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