The US version, which came on CD and not DVD, installed completely to the hard drive and did
NOT require the disc in the drive to start the game or play. It was only the European DVD version that had the StarForce.
I don't know if you can find a No-DVD for the English DVD version because the No-DVD I found with a Google search said they were for German, French, and Russian versions of the game. They may or may not work with the English DVD version of the game.
You can get the CD version pretty cheap from
***Amazon sellers*** (less than $10), but I don't know if there are other problems (not related to the copy "protection") with getting it to work on Windows 7.