Easy anti cheat error 1058

[Cuthbert Allgood]

My friend just got this game, but it won't run EAC giving "debugger has been detected" and error 1058. He runs windows XP 32bit (yeah, yeah we know) tried reinstalling, the 32bit switch, tried firewalls, running EAC alone, safe mode, and others. The game does run without EAC, any ideas as to what it thinks the debugger could be?

[SMa]

This message is shown if the game is attempted to launch via debugger. Its an anti-reverse engineering mechanism.

Is he running a genuine Windows version? Has he tried using Windows Update to check for latest updates? Something seems to be tampering with the process at launch, it might be even a kernel-mode virus infection.