So this is my 1000th try 1st and last post! BF2 help

[BrandX]

So here's my problem,

I buy BF2 back in September and it plays on my old rig a treat.......

Winxp Pro
P4 Northwood 2.8Ghz
X800xt
1gb Twinmoss
Maxtor 120 Sata HD
Abit IC7
Vantec 480w PSU

It plays fine for months on end I get all the way up to 10,000 points and then all of a sudden the game starts crashing to desktop. The crashing to desktop bug is very weird though it just doesn't cause any slow down of windows it just crashes to desktop. No caching of files or HD sorting files out etc its just crashes. But if you quit the game properly yourself it takes a few seconds for the game to shutdown and windows to be fully smooth again. It makes no sense. Reinstalled BF2 and it worked fine again for 2 weeks then did it again. No probs I thought, My new system arrives in a week.....

So new system

Opteron 144
7800gt
2x1gb Twinmoss 3200ddr
Abit AN8 Ultra
600w Hiper TypeR
Same HD as before.

Install it all, fantastic all my games work sweet as..... F.E.A.R/HL2/CIV4/Swat4/VTMB/MAFIA/COD1/2

But BF2 is still doing this crashing intermittently, anywhere from 60mins into a game to 15mins. Hmmmm

Ive now had 7 reinstalls of WinXP which is getting pretty boring. Each and every time I just install BF2 only. I've tried it with Service pack 2 and without.

Installed different Nvidia drivers on every clean install.

Defragged the HD.

Installed the BF2 updates in different orders as stated over at all the BF2 across the web.

Turned down graphical options to low.

Disabled/Enabled Fastwrites

Swapped my sticks of ram even taken ram out of the system.

Played with my soundcard out and in, used onboard sound.

Deleted Page Files and Profiles

Turned off all firewalls etc.

Used PBweb Updater

So I order Special Forces addon....

Do repeat/wash/iron.

So I'm getting exact same problems with S/F on two different systems and different platforms....AMD/Intel/ATI/Nvidia Except this time it wont fix itself for even 20 minutes. Its just crashing the 60secs to 20mins into a game.

I not diasbled any startup services. I've not OC'd a bean on this or the last machine. No excessive heat or anything.

It's got to be the game somehow, due to the way its crashing. I don't think the system is to fault.

I really am going mad now. Most people have sorted it out with fresh installs like i did previously. But it's not working anymore

Please does anyone know anything that may help.....

[Gordy]

I have a simliar setup to your first one and I have similiar issues but only every so often.

Mine crashes, sometimes completly sometimes just the ati driver has a problem.

What I've narrowed it down to is the gfx card getting over heated as its never happened when I have the fans a full tilt. My x800xt is oc'd a lot tho so it may just be to that.

Try sticking a big 120mm fan over your graphics and generally upping your cooling

[BrandX]

The only things that havent changed are your net connection and hdd?

Unless its extremely bad luck its one of those, im guessing connection. How you connectec, could not having all the right ports open cause problems.

Actually your right about one thing. I connect to the net through a ADSL, wireless router and I changed my net connection a few weeks before it started to crash. Went from Eclipse to TalkTalk. Both 1mb unlimited services. But it was weeks after before it started to crash. I'd of thought it would have shown sooner? and it did run Ok on this connection after I reinstalled it the first time on the first system.

Could a net connection really cause it to crash in such a way like this? it just goes back to desktop really, really quickly and smoothly.

Could the HD really be the problem? Wouldn't it make the whole system unstable and crash a few times? I don't actually know I'm just asking....

[BrandX]

I

Try sticking a big 120mm fan over your graphics and generally upping your cooling

7800gt atm with fan on full. Core never goes above 65 degrees. My cpu had watercooling but I took it off when I had problems and went to standard Opty cooler.

My atcs 201 has 4 internal fans. It really is like a fridge. there's a 120mm on the PSU aswell.

[BrandX]

BF2 would be like a stress test on the hdd, due to the tons of data its shifting, especially hammering the page file, so could be that its showing up a hdd problem and nothing else stresses the hdd enuf to do it.

I was thinking the very same. but it seemed very unlikely or so I thought. If none of you guys can find anything else. I think this is my only course of action?

[[GSV]Trig]

Simply put EA are getting the world to do there beta testing....
Its a shame the games actualyl good but IMHO the amount of system resources it takes up, the amount of time it takes to load is jsut rediculus...

[BrandX]

Cheeers Pyle gonna stress test it now. Still placed an order for a 74Gb Raptor though. Seems a good excuse to own one :-)

Trigg I feel as though someones laughing at me. I never had the problems with 1942/Vietnam that everyone else did and I was like "Oh Yeh whatever, won't happen to me" Oops

[bertie]

What can I say, it's an EA game you should come to expect shoddy programming
But that does seem very odd - I used to get this sort of thing when I overclocked a bit much with ATI but that's the only time.

[[GSV]Trig]

I would expect it if my machine was crap out of date and substandard but its not, unless theres something someones not tellin me...

[BrandX]

So me bought a 74Gb raptor and its still borked. Reinstalled only BF2, downloaded fresh patches aswell incase it was them making probs and bammo 3 mins in it went back to desktop.

So anyone wanna buy BF2

I really am gutted 12000 points gone to waste. I ain't played any game online cos I'm so upset, It's Christmas time aswell.

This Rig I upgraded to play Battlefield 2 on. Arghhh wot a waste of monies.

[andyjhill]

I had alot of problems with bf2 on a 2mb virgin adsl,changed service provider to pipex and havnt looked back.no more lockups,failing to connect to server and its 2mb connection as well

[RAYK47]

BF2 is notorious for this.

Do you have sufficient cooling etc ???

Are you running the latest patch ????

[BrandX]

After months of going over the same questions from people and trying 1million different things it seems it has finally been sorted. I was having a chat earlier today with my friend FordPrefect also on these boards. I asked him what exactly could cause the game to crash if it was my router. I was 100% certain this was the probelm and he also seemed certain it was.

Looked through some of the settings and disabled Upnp on the router and for some reason its been sorted. It must have been enabled when it was rebooted after changing ISP's.

Anyways thanks for all your help and much appreciation to Mr Fordy!

[FordPrefect]

np m8y.

[Tobeman]

Hehe, how bizarre. I find upnp quite handy, apparently its a security risk, and I know others have had great problems with leaving it on. What router do you have out of interest?

I was about to go blame the root of all evil, Starforce protection..

[BrandX]

Its a Dlink DSL-604+ I've had it many moons now. I keep meaning to replace it with Zyxel router but I dunno why i keep putting it off.

I've seen loads of people all over the net with same problems as me but none of them are having any luck either, can't join all the forums though just for one solution but I bet it would help them aswell! We ought to have a BF2 sticky with 1 post and the points bulleted for ease.