Well, maybe we can boost that < 1% of people are having this freakin' problem.  12, count em, TWELVE months of playing this ####ing game and loving it the whole time.  Then recently, new PB, new Audigy 2, new keyboard, #### I dunno, something weird in a hardware combination now decides it wants to restart or blue screen my sof2.  I'm raza, leader of the now defunct nph and huge sof2 enthusiast, so you can see why I'm quite concerned/stressed out/pissed off over this problem.  (and yes I am a hardcore geek).

I'm running a Giga-byte 7DXR+, that's a hybrid VIA 686B and AMD 761 chipset(s).  I have tried both an ASUS V8200 Deluxe GeForce 3 Ti200 and an ATI Radeon 9500 PRO, with various versions of drivers.  I have replaced IDE cable, hard drives, optical drives.  I have an Audigy 2 which I purchased a few months ago, and have been using the version of SoF2 that came with it ever since (only copy of the game I have).  I have 512mb of Micron original DDR PC2100. I've tried them in a 256, and 512 configuration in all slot combinations possible.  And replaced the sticks of RAM on multiple occasions and run memtest86 (www.memtest86.com).
I have tested the machine with Prime95 and 3DMark 2001, no problems.  I have swapped the Powersupply from a 300w to a 350w Enermax.  I have tried Windows 2000, SP1, SP2, SP3.  XP Pro, with SP1 and without.  I've tried pb_system 1.  I've tried the Via 4-in-1 chipset drivers installed in various orders on various operating systems.

I can run the computer for 2 #### weeks at a time without one single flaw in the machine, except when playing SoF2.

I'm sick and tired of this, but I guess it must be the VIA chipset.  I'm going to have to say #### VIA and #### Giga-byte on this occasion and purchase the new SATA board from ASUS, the A7N8X Deluxe.  I just really wish VIA and game developers would work together when making products that people truly love and enjoy.

If there is ANY WAY that Raven or VIA can fix this problem I'm sure there is a great deal of people out there getting headaches over this problem.

Apoxol never mentioned how to get these sacred so-called 'Dr. Watson' logs from your machine.  I remember good ol' Dr. Watson from Windows 95, or 3.11, or whatever, but I haven't seen it in my system since.

I'll be more than happy to send you these logs if you give me some sort of email or place to send them, and instructions on how to retrieve them.

Thanks
One Stressed Out Guy
~Raza

These 'hard' lock ups are un doubtedly a result of the new punk buster update.  Numerous Q3 based games are having problems with this new update.  Playing SoF2 on a server NOT running pb did not cause a crash 100% of the time.  like I said before, setting pb_system 1 solved this for me but may not work in all cases.

Most everyone agrees that it is hardware related.  But since PB is interacting with your hardware (scaning hard drive), I believe it is a combination of PB and hardware.

Since PB is intergrated into Ravens game, is there any chance of Raven contacting the PB team and asking about this?  I've heard they are not responding to very many support emails at the moment.

I already posted this in one of the threads, but here we go again:

I just managed to fix my problems.  I tried everything else (the stuff that was mentioned in the forums but nothing worked)  Im surprised that no one mention to repare windows, and that was exactly the fix I needed.
I always thought that the problems were with WinXP.  What you should try is to use the repare option in WinXP.  

How to do that:
1. Insert the Bootable WinXP disk
2. Restart
3. After it boots, say you want to install windows
4.  It will find that you have and version on WinXP already installed and will give you an option to repair
5. REPAIR WINDOWS
6. Dont worry you wont looses any of your files.  You might have to reinstall your video drivers just in case (if you're using nVidia video card, there's a new version of detonator driver released).

Good luck.    

Well, for me it was the fact that my Giga-byte 7DXR motherboard was sending too much voltage to the AGP slot and overheating it, I believe. Cuz it was locking up on both a GF3 Ti200 and an ATI Radeon 9500 Pro.  I took that stupid biscuit eater out and through in an Asus A7N8X, been 24 hours and still working like a charm.  Plus it boosted my 3dmark 2001 score by 1000 points.  Thank you nVidia, I definitely recommend this motherboard.  Plus 3 years of warranty, can't go wrong!

~raza

Any idea how to check/modify if the motherboard is giving the right voltage?  I have the same model...

That crashing/rebooting is exactly what Used to get but i fixed mine...from what i can make out the VIA chipset on my MOBO was causing a conflict..although Windows wasnt reporting it as such. I updated the Drivers to the very latest version...think its via hyperion 4 in 1 or something like that now. That helped but i was still getting the crashing problem, to cure it I got rid of my Cable modem that was plugged into a USB port and switched to my Onboard LAN to connect to the net, The result was I no longer crashed when running SOF2mp, i can play for as long as i want without crashing now. Actaully ive crashed 3 times in 2 months of play and those were caused when i was minimising out of SOF2 to do something else on my PC. I know what the crashing problem felt like  hope this helps anyone else with a similar problem.

my Specs that i ran when crashing:
XP2100+ (Not OC'd)
512Mb DDR Ram
80GB HD (nothing special just a crap old plain HD same with the MOBO)
600K Cable Connection with a USB Cable Modem (this is what i changed...cured the problem instantly...now run Onboard LAN @ 1Mbit and no crashes)
VIA Chipset

Cheers,
-|wR|-Oxygen