BattleField 2 - Windows 7 installation fun.

Started by Liberator, March 17, 2011, 11:31:24 AM

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Liberator

Okay, here's the thing......

BF2 is 6 years old, we were pretty much all running WinXP 32bit back then (except Sulky who was probably on WinME as he seems to like staying on troublesome OS's - get rid of Vista you fool), now where was I, ah yes, BF2 and 6 years and all that gumph. We are now 2 OS's down the line and although the last patch was released at the end of 2009 when Win7 was in RC status, EA DICE didn't test for compatibility.

I attempted to install BF2 on my system yesterday with both my BF2 and SF disks and a 2gb 1.5 patch. BF2 revels in telling you that it's only tested on WinXP 32bit.

Nothing... I get the splashscreen and then a black flicker and CTD.

Trawling the forums out there I eventually found a lot of info and some of it was actually useful, so hear goes.

INSTALLING BF2 on WIN7

You will need...

BF2 DVD
SF DVD (if owned)
BF2 1.41 Patch (required as this is a proper patch)
BF2 1.5 Patch
Empty eggbox
Empty washing up liquid bottle
Empty cereal Box
Double sided sticky tape
Paint

1. Install the game from the BF2 disk as normal.

2. If owned, install the SF disk, this also patches BF2 to 1.1.
At this point I was able to fire up BF2 to the login screen at it's base resolution 800x600

3. Install the 1.41 patch, moving straight to the 2gb 1.5 patch does not work.
Again I was able to fire up BF2 to the login screen after this at base resolutions.

4. Install the 1.5 patch, this includes the 2 DLC contents for free, meaning you now have the BF2 complete package, it also adds widescreen resolution support.

5. Fire up the game and check, don't set anything up yet though if you have your old profile stashed away.

6. Take the cereal box and cut four right angled triangles measuring approx 60mmx35mm along the corner.

7. Fold over a flap of 5mm along the 60mm edge of each triangle.

8. Put double sided stick tape along this flap.

9. On the base of the washing up liquid bottle mark points around the circumference of 90 degrees.

10. with the bottle standing upright attach a triangle to each mark with the 60mm edge pointing up to the neck of the bottle and the 35mm edge touching the ground.

11. Cut the eggbox along the fold and place each half inside down.

12. Apply paint to your creation so that you now have a space rocket with a mission control bunker and 6 fuel pods.

13. Play after paint dries.


BF2 saved Configs


To avoid problems with old resolutions in my configs I did the following.

1. Copy the default Audio.con and Video.con from your fresh installation into each of your saved profile directories, numbered 0001 onwards.

"My Documents\Battlefield 2\Profiles\Default\Video.con"
"My Documents\Battlefield 2\Profiles\Default\Audio.con"


"{old saved profile location}\Battlefield 2\Profiles\0001\" ..etc


2. Copy each of these directories 0001-onwards, into your new profile area.

"My Documents\Battlefield 2\Profiles\"


3. Fire up BF2, you should now see your old profiles and be able to log into them if you remember your password, not sure if it's just mine, but I think the encrypted passwords stored in your profiles are machine specific, so even though it had an encrypted password I had to enter it again.


4. Set the GFX to what you want and restart the game, the graphic will look poor as the menu overlays appear to be a a fixed size scaled up fit the screen, but the game window itself appears to work right, you'll notice that your mouse cursor looks right.




Network Games


Now I've not tried this yet, but most problems after actually getting the game working, appear to be due to Punkbuster compatibility. Meaning you'll get dropped off the server after about 5 minutes play and probably CTD.

Basically, from what I've read, all our new super duper security in Win7 means that a standard installation of PB may not work, the way around this is to install it as a service from an administrator account and this allows you to run BF2 from any account.

Here are some threads and a link to the PB website describing stuff.

PunkBuster Service
PunkBuster Setup


Threads


Battletracker
Microsoft Answers (A detailed description)



We can always turn off PB on the LAN server if people still have issues.

Tutonic

My copy installed normally (W7 x64), and the patches worked, but I can't play for more than about 10 minutes before getting rudely dumped back to my desktop. I'll try running the game as Admin, and see if that helps.

FYI, I angered the Punkbuster gods by running the game through Steam. Apparently it's so old that it detects the Steam overlay as some sort of hack and kicks you off the server. You can get round this by either disabling the Steam Overlay in Steam's options, or (if you have a retail copy, like me) just running BF2.exe outside of Steam.
Hero of the Battle Of Chalkeia
"Don\'t worry, none of this blood is mine"



sulky_uk

only just noticed lib slagging me off, i was at war dont you know......anyhow, works in vista mate


I came into this world with nothing,
through careful management I\'ve got most of it left.

ArithonUK

Sorry to hear of your problems.

I installed BF2 a few months ago. Apart from adding "+menu 1 +fullscreen 1" to the command line, I've not had to do anything to get it running on Win7 x64.

I installed BF2, added SF then patched to 1.41 and then 1.50.

TheDvEight

ive got bf2 on win 7 32bit OS installed fine from disk and i keep the disk in to play it
"Mira Mira on the wall who\'s the fairest of them all?" - Dickdastardly "it\'ll sting a lot" - Lesion