Ok. Let me start by saying I've never had any problems with my configuration until this point. I'll try to list in detail all of the things that have been going wrong.

Firstly, I don't have the hard-copy version of this game. I bought it off of EA's online store and used their download program, EA Core. I have to run it in the taskbar and select "play game" from it to play the actual game.

Today I noticed that instead of a "play game" button it had a "begin download" button. I guessed that it was just glitching and I ran the game from a shortcut I had made.

All was fine until I tried to log onto the server and it gave me an "Invalid CD Key" message. I tried a few other servers (in vain) and exited.

Thinking something was amiss, I thought to re-patch my game with my incremental 1.40-1.50 patch. When I tried it said something along the lines of "BF2142 directory not found". Yes, it has worked before. I reopened EA Core and started re-downloading the game. Remember it had a "begin download" button now.

Waiting was not fun. Back on topic, once it had completed I ran the install. It popped up with the installing screen and it disappeared just as fast. I tried this a gain a few times until I gave up and tried uninstalling the game. I got the same thing, a few seconds of installing and then nothing.

I'm not sure if it's relevant, but during this process I made a backup of my "/My Documents/BF2142" folder. Might've been a safety feature of EA's.

Anyway, I tried playing the game later that night (after a restart) and I noticed it would let me load the map, but once I joined I was immediately kicked by something called "Globalpunkbuster", or so one of our admins tells me.


I hope you guys can help. I'd like to get back to playing with you all soon.

-Echo