I have a very strange problem that I'm hopeing you guys can help me with.             I have been playing SOF2 w/gold patch on this rig for quit some time with no problems until the other day.     I tried to fire up the game and it froze at the loading screen.    I uninstalled/reinstalled the game with the same thing hapening???     After it freezes, I can hit ctel,alt,delete and it will finish loading???     Right when the task manager shows up, it shows SOF not responding then running??     I had been looking for a good reason to reformat, so that's what I diid.     I even went as far as to write 0's to the drive.     I did a clean install of XPpro, loaded the mobo drivers, then video drivers and defraged.    Loaded SOF2 w/gold patch and guess what.......still doing it?    I was sure that would fix it.      It's strange because when it freezes and I run the task manager, it loads.....only if TM is running?     Here are my system specs:

ASUS A7N8X Delexe
Athlon 2100 T bred @2200 MHz's
Samsung PC 2700 256x2 (512megs)
Albatron GeForce4 Ti4200 128meg 8x 4345 drivers
WD 40gig 7200 rpm HHD
XP PRO
350 PSU

Thanks guys for any advise you might have.

i have the exact same troubs, sof freeses when Loading screen comes up and i cant exit it     wtf  do i have to go back to CS (with all of its lame cheaters) or wah??

Man please tell me I don't have to do that....lolol

Anybody have any ideas??      

well, if sof had a co op mode (which ALL shooters should have ffs!!) we could do some lan-ing!!    

I don't think that would help my problem as I never actually get to the menu??     Do you know if the Albatron grachic cards give trouble with SOF?

Recon,

I am not quite sure what would cause your problem.  It sounds as if there is some software conflict.  Some other memory resident program you have running on your computer at the same time could cause this problem.

Try closing any background apps that are not necessary (office shell, winamp, messaging software) and then launch the game.

I have all unnecessary programs stoped and nothing is running when I try to run sof.     I did take this Albatron card(2 weeks old) out and put in an old ati7000 and it runs now???    None of the q3 engine games will run now with the albatron        What would cause the card to stop playing those games???    Thanks for any help.