Guide to solving Crash To Desktop issues

[Morat]

If any admins are passing and consider this useful, would they mind stickying it please. This has been horrific to get solved, and it'd be nice for anyone else with the same trouble to be able to find it

Over the past couple of months I've been having a heck of a time trying to solve my BF2 crash to desktop issues. Every time I thought I'd done it, the darn thing would start up again and I'd be back to square one. The aim of this guide is to gather in one place everything I did along the way to solving my CTD issues. I've had a couple of weeks of crash-free play, so I'm now pretty certain that the key to solving these problems is here.

Firstly, the symptoms. My CTDs all happened between 2-30 minutes into joining a server. Single player was unaffected, and no other games were affected. The game would appear to minimise to the taskbar, so that the desktop was visible, and then it would simply disappear a couple of seconds later. The game wrote a .dmp file to the Battlefield 2\dmp folder under My Documents.

Here are the things to check, double-check and check again on the road to a cure:

Have you changed any key hardware, especially monitor or video card?
If so, you may not be able to get in the game at all (the game might exit to desktop almost instantly at startup). If you have, and the trouble only started since you did, then uninstall the game and reinstall. Make sure to delete all the Battlefield 2 folder under my documents and the main game folder before reinstalling.

Look for system events at the time of the crash
On XP open the event viewer (one of the Administrator Tools) and see if there are any events logged around the time of the crash. It was this that clued me in to the WIA service startup being a possible cause. If there are any events in there that the rest of this guide doesn't cover then you'll need to investigate them.

Are you running XFire?{
I found through experimentation that if XFire disconnects then it caused BF2 to CTD when it reconnects. XFire has strange reconnect timings (anything from a few minutes to half-an-hour) which seemed like a likely candidate. Try exiting XFire and playing and see if that solves your issues.

Is the Windows Image Acquisition (WIA) Service set to manual or disabled?
I'd been through my services and set some to start manually, including this one. Some of my crashes were associated with this service starting up in the middle of the game. It's possible that Punkbuster is using this service for its in-game screenshot ability, but that's a guess. Set this to auto and see if it makes a difference.

Is Service Pack 2 Installed (Win XP only obviously)
Whether or not this will make a difference is debateable, but I strongly suspect that some software I had installed was unstable because SP2 wasn't installed. This was the last action I took that seemed to clear up my CTDs.

Are you running a selective startup, with some items disabled?
Again, in my quest for FPS I'd turned off some startup items in msconfig, mostly tray applications for drivers and suchlike. Try re-enabling all startup items in case something is getting upset that something it's relying on is no longer running.

And now the long shots...

Do you have any programs installed you don't use any more?
It's always worth a trawl down add/remove programs to get shut of anything you no longer use.

Do you have any programs installed you don't recognize?
Even more important than getting rid of clutter, make double sure there's nothing installed that you just plain don't recognize. My wife had installed the Yahoo toolbar and some sort of printing thingummy without realising it, so they went too.

For what it's worth, I suspect the WIA service and lack of Service Pack 2 were the cause of my issues. SP2 because I think I might have installed something that depended on it and was unstable because it wasn't there.

[mrhahn]

Edited title to make it completely clear and sticky'd. Nice work.

[Morat]

I thought I should post an update to this. Since I posted this I found out that actually I hadn't solved the problem at all and the CTDs were as bad as ever. So I took radical steps, but I can confirm that it has worked, and I've had crash-free BF2 ever since.

I reinstalled Windows XP. But I went one further.

I have a couple of HDs, so I've got separate installs of XP on each one, one of which is ONLY for games and essential game-related stuff, e.g. Teamspeak. I use a bootloader called OSL2000 to switch between them at boot time. It took a long time to set up and get right, but I now have a very fast, slick games drive that doesn't get affected by anything else that anyone else using the PC (including me) does.

I recommend it, but if you don't want to go that far then try a reinstall and see how BF2 is afterwards. You may well find that some POS software, or CODEC or something else that you've installed has upset your machine....

[Fishnchipz90]

ok i have a question about the CTD's.. if u goto the EAsy info program, if it says that anything has failed the requirements, does that mean you cant play? My incompatibilities are my Nvidia Geforce 2 mx/mx 400 and my 1.5 ghz processor.. but i can play bigtime games like World of warcraft with 342758725928365 people running around on my screen with no lag, but i cant start BF2? I dont understand can someone please help me with this... I get CTD's as soon as i goto start the game.. the screen flickers 4 times then goes to desktop. Please help! i spent 100 dollars to be able to play with my friends at my house (I have 2 computers, same spec)

[mrhahn]

The processor should be fine, but your graphics card doesn't meet the minimum system requirements unfortunately.

[Fishnchipz90]

ok well does that mean that the graphics card is the problem and i need to purchase a new one?

[mrhahn]

Yep, the game won't run on your card, so you'll need to buy a new card.

[Fishnchipz90]

mk thanks

I will let you know if i still cant do anything once i get one, may be a while

[grim reaper]

Originally Posted by Fishnchipz90

mk thanks

I will let you know if i still cant do anything once i get one, may be a while

Make sure you run your choice through the guys in Hardware & Software, A few of the people in their really know their stuff.

[Dick_Justice]

Originally Posted by Fishnchipz90

mk thanks

I will let you know if i still cant do anything once i get one, may be a while

Judging by what you wrote above though...you should start saving asap. If you want to seriously play BF, then its going to cost a little more than just a GPU replacement...

[Copperhead]

Good thread, although it hasnt yet solved my problems.

I tried to remove some tray items, shutting off various annoyances courtesy of Norton, and removing useless shit like Steam that constantly starts up even though i havent played any Valve games in more than 6 months.

Usually, the result is a CTD with a subsequent yell of JESUS FUCKING CHRIST!!!! or something of the sort. The most annoying part is that there is no error in the event viewer, so damn frustrating.

It takes me a few mins to start up the game and get a map loaded to play and im tired of waiting that long just to see if the damn game will run. AGH!!!

Allright, after about 45 minutes of modifying settings, turning shit off, turning it back on, changing settings again, starting the game, putting settings to minimum, turning off AA, im no closer to a solution. Strangely, i didnt change ANYTHING at all, the game just decided by itself that it would start CTDing every time i connect to a server. I dont even have the patience to email EA support, because if that doesnt work im gonna fucking destroy my computer and anything in my room that isnt sledge-hammer proof. If someone has this exact problem and can give me a solution, please go ahead and solve, otherwise im done with this shit.

It seems now that BF2 arbitrarily decides to run whenever it wants to. I cant actually tell when the game will run, i just have to start it up at random times to see if it does at all. Retarded.

[sparkzy]

I too am getting the same god dam problem and the thing I did was that I uninstalled bf 1942 and reinstalled it and got this god dam problem.
Sooooo I uninstalled it again and cleaned the lot even the registry keys I cleaned out no trace of bf 1942 reinstalled the game working fine for about 2 weeks and bam its now crashing back to the desk top wtf.
My card is 128 meg nivda geforce fx 6000

[St@rfir3]

I cant get Bf2 to work, every time i start Bf2 I see the ea logo, the intro movie with sound. And i can login my accountserver within the minute. I can change settings. But when I try to join a server or solo game Bf2 crash to desktop.

It worked always fine, but after i did a fresh install with XP my drivers and other programs Bf2 stopped working.

I have tried everything old drivers, new drivers disable firewall anti virus cleaned registry and reinstall bf2 and bf2 sf then patch 1.41. But I cant get it working. Still getting CTD after splashscreen when I try to join a server or solo game. Can there be an issue with my account and the account server because normally it takes a minute or 2, and now im in my account within the minute??


I have also Bf2142 and that works without problems. So what could it be??? I have searched all forums but cant find an reasonable answer.

Its now 3 months later still no solution please help me


System

P4 2.8ghz
1GB ddr
Asus geforce 7600GT
Realtek HD audio
Win XP Home edition
Xp firewall
AVG virus program

[St@rfir3]

Problem Solved after reinstalling XP a second time thx for the help boys

[Mr.Cheesecakes0]

Dude, i just in stalled the 1.41 patch and every time that i try to open BF2 now it goes to a couple shades of black like the game's starting then it goes back to desktop. I think the only questions i can ask is WTF!!!!!