BF2142 will not start!

[{M5}Sniper3]

I have not played 2142 in a while and today I decided, what the hell I'll give it another shot. But as soon as I double-clicked the shortcut it goes to a black screen for a few minutes then splashes back to desktop. I have had this game working on this computer before. I have manually un-installed both EA Link and 2142 and reinstalled them. I have installed 2142, the 1.25 patch and then reinstalled EA Link over itself as some sites suggested. I have run the 2142.exe in Windows 2000 compatibility mode. I have deleted the radial.cdb file as a site suggested. And last but not least I have installed the Windows hot-fix that is supposed to fix this problem. Still no luck, just a black screen and a splash to the desktop.

PLEASE help.

Computer specs:
I am running Windows XP SP2.
Asus A8N-SLI Premium
AMD 64 4000+
ATI 512MB X1900 XTX
2 x Western Digital Raptor X WD1500AHFD 150GB 10,000 RPM (RAID 0)
Hiper Type-R 580W power supply
X-Fi Platinum Fatal1ty sound card
2 GB Kingston HyperX KHX3200AK2 400MHz DDR

I do not have Norton and my firewall has not changed since the last time I've played this game.

Thanks for reading.

[Natt]

Changing your monitor or screen resolution/refresh rate will cause this.
Did you delete the Battlefield 2142 folder in My Documents when you uninstalled? If not delete it now and the game will create a new one.

[{M5}Sniper3]

I tried deleting the Battlefield 2142 folder in My Documents but came to the same black screen and splash to desktop.

[Natt]

Here's some fixes for bf2 crashes that I have edited, try the most plausible ones first eg 1, 4, 7, 9, 12:

Crash to Desktop Issues

Problem - Crash to Desktop on starting Battlefield 2142
Cause - Several Possible Causes
Fix - There is no fix known to work for everyone, merely a list of possible things to try to resolve the issue;

1. Rename the Movies folder in your Battlefield 2142\mods\bf2142 folder to Movies2, to skip the start up Movies which can be the cause of the Problem.

2. Move your Battlefield 2142 folder in My documents and put it on your desktop. When loading BF2142 Again it should force it to create a new one using default settings.

3.Go here
C:\Documents and Settings\Username\My Documents\Battlefield 2142\Profiles\0001
and here
C:\Documents and Settings\Username\My Documents\Battlefield 2142\Profiles\0001\Defualt
Or get there from using my documents on desktop.
Open the video.con file with notepad and change the line
VideoSettings.setResolution ????x?????@??Hz (???? are your settings)
to
VideoSettings.setResolution 800x600@60Hz

4. Check you have no software forcing a set refresh rate, if you do disable it.

5. If on a AGP card, try running at 4x speed instead of 8x speed. I believe ATI users can change this in there ATI control panel, or use the ATI panel in display settings. You can access display settings by right clicking on your desktop, then clicking properties.
For Nvidia users it may be necessary to set it in the bios.
By doing this the loss of FPS is very small, but you can significantly improve the systems stability

6. Check on your graphic card control panel that everything is set to application controlled to see if it helps.

7. Re-Install the latest version of Directx from the Microsoft Website

8. Press CTRL+ALT+DEL to open up task manger. make sure that the process ~5.0001 is not running. If it is, end task it and try again.

9. Use Driver Cleaner to erase your old Graphic Card drivers, then update to a more recent or stable version of graphic card drivers for your graphic card.

10. Disable/Add BF2142 to DEP

To turn it off do this

Right click on my computer
Select properties
Select the advanced tab
Select performance options
Select the data execution prevention tab
Add BF2142.exe to the list of exceptions OR turn DEP off completly.
Reboot

11. A new Idea from the EA US BF2142 Forums, is to goto

C:\Program Files\Electronic Arts\Battlefield 2142\mods\bf2142\Settings

Open up VideoDefault.con with notepad, and set

renderer.setFullScreen 0
renderer.allowAllRefreshRates 0

to

renderer.setFullScreen 1
renderer.allowAllRefreshRates 1

12. Disable VOIP, for some people this can stop crashes and hard reboots.

13. UltraVNC (and possibly other remote administration tools) can install a "mirror driver" to enhance it's network performance. This item is displayed in the Device Manager as an additional Display Adapter. While installed, this driver causes BF2142 to crash to the desktop just after showing the splash screen.
Re-installing UltraVNC without using the mirror driver works without a problem.

[[Inkblot]]

I had this problem and I updated punkbuster and it worked fine for me.