How to use Origin without fear that they will scan your computer for "Cracked" games/software.

Now no doubt many of you have concerns about E.A.'s Origin scanning the contents of your PC, me being one of them but not willing to miss out on great games I have found a tutorial written to help you with that.

IMPORTANT NOTE!!! I did not write the tutorial, all I know is it worked for me and that you should take your own precautions when following it!

Limit Origin and other programs from accessing various things:

It turns out that there's a free version of Sandboxie that supports both 64bit and 32bit Windows. My biggest gripe was with Origin scanning the ProgramData folder however after more testing, its access can indeed be blocked by Sandboxie.

Here are the basic steps to limit Origin's access:

-Download and install the free version of Sandboxie and then run it
-Create a new sandbox called Origin

-Open command prompt and type "cd C:\ProgramData"
-Then type "dir /d"
-Copy the list of directories to an empty Notepad document and remove the Origin entry in the pasted text

-Use Edit / Replace to get rid of all "]" characters
-Use Edit / Replace to replace all "[" characters with "ClosedFilePath=C:\ProgramData\"
-Add "OpenPipePath=C:\" at the top of the document for however many normal hard drives/partitions you have on the PC (D,E,F,etc). You shouldn't need to worry as the only major thing Origin appears to access outside of EA/Origin/System related stuff is the ProgramData folder

-Copy all the text in notepad and get back to Sandboxie
-Go to Configure / Edit configuration
-While editing the opened ini file go to the very bottom of the Origin entry and paste the text underneath
-Save and close the file, Sandboxie should automatically put up a message about updating its settings

-If need be you can check the Sandbox settings in Sandboxie itself to make sure everything has been set correctly
-Run Origin through the sandbox that you created. Provided that you removed the Origin folder entry before it should execute and login just fine

There you have it; testing showed that Origin's behaviour remained the same in such an environment with the exception that it couldn't access the folders in ProgramData except its own folder.

I can't 100% garuantee this, but it does appear that after taking these steps that Origin will not access much outside system/origin/ea stuff and so your other stuff should be private. You might need to tweak the sandbox settings a bit however if you install additional programs that use ProgramData to stop Origin from accessing them.

Remember that Origin isn't the only suspect software you may have; you can use Sandbox and ProcessMonitor for other suspect programs as well.

Unless Origin gets an update that makes it more invasive I'll be willing to use Origin outside of tests at the moment, now we just have to hope that BF3 and other Origin games don't suck

-End of Tutorial

Remember that Origin will act kind of funky for a while since many of its automatic features will be blocked so you will receive a lot of popups from sandboxie and Origins going WHAT THE HELL?! Remember I did not write this so I cannot provide any assistance if you need any, I am sorry! If anybody needs help and you know how to help them please do not hold your silence and help them!



NOTE:

I have all Sims 3 expansions, and stuff packs through games4theworld. I bought Simcity 5, and am using this method to block origin from accessing those files.

It does work, and from the log files, Origin can't even see that the other files exist, while sandboxed.

Very nice, thanks for the tutorial!

I've always had origin installed (All the sims 3 games I own are always downloaded through it), and it's never once scanned/detected any cracked games. It's impossible for it to tell the difference between legit and unregistered, and torrented and cracked. It's 100% legal to crack a game you own, even if they could tell a game was cracked anyways.