BF2 won't start...very strange

[paJAMbla]

I had quit playing BF2 for awhile and missed playing so I re-installed it. Everything went fine. Got the 1.41 patch installed and decided to play servers with that version for a spell. It was working just fine for a few weeks....then poof. All the sudden it wouldn't start. I click the icon and the initial splash screen comes up, disappears, then nothing. Won't load. I uninstalled it....uninstalled my video driver too. Cleaned everything BF2 out of my computer by uninstalling, deleting, etc. and running CCleaner. Ran a driver cleaner to rid my computer of the ATI driver and deleted everything related to ATI. I upgraded to a relatively newer and the most stable version of the Catalyst full software suite/ driver (9.2) for my old computer. I made sure my discs were clean before the reinstall of BF2. After all that its still not starting. I can't think of anything else. BTW I did not install Gamespy Arcade when asked, but that shouldn't matter. Any thoughts or advice would be appreciated. Here are my specs.:

Dell Dimension 8300
P4 3.4 Extreme cpu
X1950 pro (AGP)
2 gigs RAM
PC Power & Cooling Silencer 410W psu
Samsung 22" monitor

[Force Flow]

Take a look at your event viewer for any warnings or errors. There could be clues in there

Control panel > administrative tools > event viewer

[paJAMbla]

Thanks Force Flow. Under "Application" in the viewer there are several "Error" logs. Nothing next to "source" but the recent ones are at the time I've been installing or attempting to boot BF2 I believe. What does this mean?

[Force Flow]

What are the details? Double click on them to get access to the error ID, type, and description

[Devastator]

Latest patch is 1.5, but you still need to install 1.41 first.

The game is gradually dieing out, I used to be a huge fan but servers just seem to be disappearing.

If you've patched to 1.5 and it's still not working I can't see what the problem might be, apart from something like PB interfering perhaps, could always try updating it.

Hope this helps.

[paJAMbla]

Force Flow I'll check on that when I get home from work.

Devastator I never patched to 1.5....just 1.41. I was wondering about punkbuster also but its just weird that it was working with no problems for a few weeks, then one day it just stopped with no update or error message. Can you tell me how to update pb? I remember it being kind of a process if I'm not mistaken.

Thank you.

[David M]

Do you have the option of reinstalling it with no patches? No patches is better than not being able to play it at all.

[paJAMbla]

David....yeah you can. I did that last night. I just have the feeling that maybe a system file of some sort got corrupted or deleted? I have no idea if there's an inherent file that would affect BF2.

[paJAMbla]

Force Flow....here is the info in the Event Viewer: Application

When I click all the error lines they say the same thing:

Type: Error
Source: (blank)
Category: none

Desciption:
The description for Event ID ( 0 ) in Source ( ) cannot be found. The local computer may not have the necessary registry information or message DLL files to display messages from a remote computer. You may be able to use the /AUXSOURCE= flag to retrieve this description; see Help and Support for details. The following information is part of the event: 7.

[Devastator]

No idea about the above but I do recommend you try 1.5

Punkbusters updater can be found on this page:
PunkBuster Online Countermeasures

You can also check punkbuster is installed and running correctly with this:
http://www.evenbalance.com/downloads/pbsvc/pbsvc.exe

It will sort any problems out for you.

Hope this might help.

[paJAMbla]

Thanks Devastator....I updated PB, checked it, and it didn't solve my problem. I'm not sure that having the 1.5 patch will fix it either. Before this happened I was playing on 1.41 servers with a lot of other players still on them as well. But....I'll try it. At this point I'll try anything short of wiping out my hard drive and reinstalling windows. Right now I think I'm more driven by the challenge of fixing this than I am about actually playing it again!!!

[mandy203]

try a fresh reinstall.

[paJAMbla]

I think I solved the problem. I decided to try installing BF2 in another computer in our house and I had the exact same issue. I knew right then it was a program on both of our computers.....likely security of course. I uninstalled Avira and sure enough, BF2 booted right up!

Apparently disabling it wasn't enough. I guess one of the recent updates doesn't allow BF2 or punkbuster to work.

Thanks for working through this with me.