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Why the hell has my BF2 stopped working?

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Nealoc187

Registered
Joined
Aug 5, 2006
OK here's the deal, I just got this computer up and running after it sat for like 1.5-2 years. Installed new PSU, AGP video card and ram. Here are the components

Asus A7N8X mobo
Athlon XP 2500+ Barton
Ati X850Pro AGP
Kingston HyperX 2x512mb

So it played BF2 fine initially.

I've got a nasty old ps2 keyboard hooked up so I went out and bought a new USB keyboard, some gaming keyboard called the Z-board Merc. Installed that, installed the drivers for it that I DL'd off their site as per their instructions. Tried to start BF2.

BF2 looks like it's trying to start, CD ROM spins up, the BF2 loading screen comes up (the big one with the brownish desert background and the big BATTLEFIELD 2 logo) just like normal. Then the screen goes black for a second just like normal, but then it drops back out to windows. So I try again, same thing. So I decide to restart the comp. I do, and then BF2 works fine. I play a couple rounds and decide I really don't like this keyboard, so I unhook it and put my PS2 keyboard back in, then go to eat some dinner, come back and play another couple rounds, and then go to bed.

Today I decide to install my new sound card, Audigy SE 7.1 - and to uninstall the Z-Board drivers that I installed last night. I install the sound card as per the instructions - disabling the on board nvidia Nforce sound first, and then go uninstall the Z-board drivers in control panel and go to fire up BF2 - No start again. Same thing as earlier, loading screen, then blank screen as normal, then dropout to desktop. I try this about 5 times with the same results each time.

So I start to retrace my steps. I disable the SB Audigy and restart the computer, no worky. I remove the SB audigy card entirely from the computer, no start. I've reinstalled the Z-board Merc gaming keyboard which I'm typing on right now, still no BF2 start. I try playing with my desktop resolution as if that will do anything - no start. I'm about to reinstall the Z-board drivers and see if that will allow the game to start, since the last time I had the game running, I had the Z-board drivers still installed, but was using the old PS/2 keyboard.

I have the latest BF2 1.41 update patch installed (since I first ran the game a couple days ago). I'm re-downloading the patch right now and going to try to reinstall the whole game and the patch as soon as the 536mb patch finishes downloading.

Does anyone have any ideas? I've tried to start the game from the CD Rom auto play, the desktop shortcut, and the start menu, not working. I've tried every configuration that has previously worked in the past 2 days, nothing. I've probably attempted to start the game 20-30 times now, not working - just the loading screen then blank screen flicker (you know how you can hear CRTs faintly pop then hiss for a second as you start a game) and then drop out to Windows XP Pro SP2.
 
LOL! I said the SAME exact thing. I installed BF2 then applied the 1.41 patch, worked perfectly. Got tired, shutdown the rig for the night, next morning, BF2 was dead. Uninstalled, reinstalled, worked perfect. Restarted cuz system was laggy...BF2 was dead. So...everytime I restart if I want to play I gotta reinstall =/
 
ziggo0 said:
LOL! I said the SAME exact thing. I installed BF2 then applied the 1.41 patch, worked perfectly. Got tired, shutdown the rig for the night, next morning, BF2 was dead. Uninstalled, reinstalled, worked perfect. Restarted cuz system was laggy...BF2 was dead. So...everytime I restart if I want to play I gotta reinstall =/


GAH - I hope I don't have to do that every time I restart the comp. I only use this computer for gaming - I use my laptop for everything else so I don't want to keep it running all the time. Yeesh - I hope I (and you) can get this figured out.
 
have you looked up your particular problem over at EA's support page? have you tried running BF2 in compatibility mode?
Today I decide to install my new sound card, Audigy SE 7.1 - and to uninstall the Z-Board drivers that I installed last night. I install the sound card as per the instructions - disabling the on board nvidia Nforce sound first, and then go uninstall the Z-board drivers in control panel and go to fire up BF2 - No start again. Same thing as earlier, loading screen, then blank screen as normal, then dropout to desktop. I try this about 5 times with the same results each time.

I think what you should have done here is uninstall the z-board drivers first, reboot, go into your BIOS and disable your onboard sound, reboot and load into windows. From there, then you should have tried installing your soundcard. Just my take on things....

There might be some service or application running in the background that is keeping BF2 from running full screen or even at all... might be a .dll or .exe dependecy issue?? :shrug: have you run a virus scan on your computer?

If worse comes to worse, you might have to re-format to truly get things back to working. BF2 is known for its numerous bugs. Leave it to DICE and EA to release a buggy game lol
 
I'm getting the same problem. My current workaround is just to keep trying to load BF2. It usually takes about 3-10 tries to get it to load correctly.
1. Sometimes it doesn't display anything.
2. Usually I just get the splash screen, then back to desktop.
3. Rarely the game loads to the login menu, where I get no background graphics (the troops fighting).
4. And lastly, I'll get kicked from servers because they require "unmodified content". I'm not running anything special, and I didn't modify anything in BF2.

All the issues have come from the newest 1.41 patch. I can hardly believe that the game seems to be getting worse with every patch.

So far, I've found that the unmodified content kick is from sound issues. I was actually guessing that the rest of the errors were from a faulty dvd drive or psu.

I'm not enjoying that to solve most problems, EA recommends that you reinstall everything.:mad:
 
Well I finally got it working. Tried reinstalling the game as per the advice above, didn't work. Before that I backtraced my steps, undoing all I described earlier and nothing worked. I tried a bunch of fixes listed in a thread about the subject on ea's forums and none of those worked either. Reinstalled my ATI X850 Pro AGP's drivers and now the game works again. So then I went back and methodically reinstalled everything and it still works, so it appears to me that it was a video card issue that caused it, not sure why it would show up at a random time when no changes were made to the video portion of my system but whatever.

All of the fixes on ea's BF2 forums also centered around various video issues, though there were many different "fixes" for this same problem. If it messes up again I'll start with the video drivers I guess, knock on wood.
 
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