A while ago I decided to give a check on some of my old uploads on my personal blog. That took me to
this post where I talked about how I fixed my old copy of Mega Man X5 on PC. I decided to take a look at the PCGaming Wiki link I shared there since I wanted to make sure my instructions still worked. To my surprise, the download I used from there was gone
Of course, since it's a wiki I tried searching through the article's history and apparently the download and patch shared there was killed. I then noticed since when it was gone and possible reasons:
https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Talk:Mega_Man_X5So I talked with @ViperAcidZX and she pretty much confirmed me nothing new has happened since then. So I checked my copy of X5 and, yeah, my copy does work even today on Windows 11. And I pretty much remember and based on what I wrote in my article that the only thing the patch did was replace the main executable of the game.
To sum it up, if you have a copy of Mega Man X5 for PC that doesn't work anymore because of DRM, try replacing the main exe with this file:
https://files.catbox.moe/7cvyt1.7zIt's in a 7zip file. As far as I know, that's the only thing the patch did to fix the game not working anymore. (I lost the original zip containing the patch, btw. But as far I recall, it was actually the full game, so it's probably why it got taken down.)