Need to confirm you do own both ArmA2 and ArmA2 Operation Arrowhead, and or ArmA2 Combined Operations?

At this point everything you have described can be worked around by acutally reading the instructions and guides that we have posted many times.

If you have ArmA2 installed in a seperate folder than your Operation Arrowhead content, then ... this might come as a suprise, but you would be unable to load content from the other folder, when running a game in another.

The solution to this is either to make symbolic links (windows vista/7/2008) or junction links (windows xp). A lower tech approach could be to simply copy all of your ArmA2 Operation arrowhead content into your ArmA2 Directory.

You would then need to modify your Registry if you have done the drag and drop approach, to correct the installed path of your OA cotnent into your A2 folder.

(x64bit) -- hkey_localmachine\software\Wow6432Node\Bohemia Interactive Studio\
Under this key you will have 2 to 4 folders one for each game/expansion
(ArmA 2, ArmA 2 BAF, ArmA 2 OA, ArmA 2 PMC)
Under each of these is a key titled MAIN, modify the data value so that all match
ONLY IF YOU DRAG AND DROP.

This will resolve your ArmA2 and ArmA2 OA content mismatch issues.


Now as for your CBA issues, you seem to not know or understand how you start the game and are incapable of telling us what you click on to start each game. This is correctable.

I would suggest from your ArmA2 OA directory that you locate the arma2oa.exe file and rightclick on it, then create a shortcut and copy that to your desktop.... You can do this multiple times in a manner for how you wish to launch the game. You can also rename these files so that you know what each one does.

Once you have these desktop shortcuts, rightclick and go to properties on them (each respectivly). The first window you should read should report back as shorcut. There are a number of fileds that you can edit. There are is only one section that we care about at this time. That is the Target:
It should read as something simmilar to the following (unedited)

"C:\(your path to where ArmA2 is installed)\ArmA2\arma2oa.exe"
This part be it steam/manual install/copied install is fine, dont change it, it works.
You will want to add the following lines after the ending quotes (this guy ").

Code:

-nosplash  -noworld -mod=@CBA;@ACE;@ACEX;@ACEX_SM;@ACEX_RU;@ACEX_USNAVY;@ACRE;@JayArmA2Lib

What this does, it it lets you pick and choose which mods are loaded when you launch the game... in the above example it loads all of the ace required content and ACRE content.

If you didnt want to load parts of it, you could remove the parts that you do not wish to load.
This is how you modify a shortcut, I would recommend that you rename each shortcut that you do create and modify to make it something that you can remember what it is for. I would rename the above example into something such as "ACE/ACRE @ TacticalGamer"