Hey all,

I've started a correspondence with Activision Support to see if they can solve this but I also thought I'd come to the Raven forums to see if anyone else has had a similar problem.

I have just installed SoF2 with all the patches, 1.01-1.03 Gold, Single Player launches just fine, but when I attempt to launch SoF2MP it shows the loading screen with the Gold Edition logo front and center, then it hangs there just "loading."

I have a distinct feeling it has something to do with one of the things below, but I'm not certain. It's either the new 5.1 Catalyst Drivers (with Control Panel) for my ATI Radeon 9800xt that I just installed, compatibility issues with DirectX 9.0c, or possibly Service Pack 2 for WinXP.

Below are my basic system stats as shown in SiSoftware Sandra, if anyone has any ideas/solutions or questions about this problem it would be greatly appreciated. Note that I have attempted to rollback my Catalyst Drivers and haven't had much luck. Also, the current Mobo Drivers I am currently using are the same ones I used prior to installing SP2 (when SoF2MP WAS working) so I know those aren't the issue.

Processor
Model : AMD Athlon™ XP 2100+
Speed : 1.74GHz
Model Number : 2100 (estimated)
Performance Rating : PR2519 (estimated)
Type : Standard
L2 On-board Cache : 256kB ECC Synchronous Write-Back (16-way, 64 byte line size)

Mainboard
Bus(es) : AGP PCI USB FireWire/1394 i2c/SMBus
MP Support : No
MP APIC : No
System BIOS : Phoenix Technologies, LTD ASUS A7N8X Deluxe ACPI BIOS Rev 1008
Mainboard : ASUSTeK Computer INC. A7N8X
Total Memory : 1535MB

Chipset 1
Model : ASUSTeK Computer Inc nForce2 AGP Controller
Front Side Bus Speed : 2x 134MHz (268MHz data rate)

Video System
Monitor/Panel : Plug and Play Monitor
Adapter : RADEON 9800 XT
Adapter : RADEON 9800 XT - Secondary

Physical Storage Devices
Removable Drive : Floppy disk drive
Hard Disk : MAXTOR 6L080L4 (74.6GB)
Hard Disk : Maxtor 6Y250P0 (233.8GB)
Hard Disk : WDC WD600AB-60BVA0 (55.9GB)
CD-ROM/DVD : SONY CD-RW  CRX300E (CD 40X Rd, 40X Wr) (DVD 5X Rd)
CD-ROM/DVD : Generic DVD-ROM SCSI CdRom Device (CD 32X Rd) (DVD 4X Rd)

Logical Storage Devices
1.44MB 3.5" (A:) : N/A
Localdisk (C:) : 55.9GB (32.5GB, 58% Free) (NTFS)
Backupdrive (D:) : 233.8GB (71.1GB, 30% Free) (NTFS)
Musicdrive (E:) : 74.5GB (15.9GB, 21% Free) (NTFS)
sofii_1 (F:) : 585MB (0MB, 0% Free) (CDFS)

Peripherals
Serial/Parallel Port(s) : 2 COM / 1 LPT
USB Controller/Hub : Standard OpenHCD USB Host Controller
USB Controller/Hub : Standard OpenHCD USB Host Controller
USB Controller/Hub : USB Root Hub
USB Controller/Hub : USB Root Hub
USB Controller/Hub : USB Composite Device
FireWire/1394 Controller/Hub : OHCI Compliant IEEE 1394 Host Controller
Keyboard : HID Keyboard Device
Mouse : Logitech HID-compliant Cordless Mouse
Human Interface : HID-compliant device
Human Interface : HID-compliant consumer control device
Human Interface : Logitech Cordless USB Mouse
Human Interface : USB Human Interface Device
Human Interface : USB Human Interface Device

MultiMedia Device(s)
Device : MPU-401 Compatible MIDI Device
Device : Standard Game Port

Printers and Faxes
Model : Microsoft Office Document Image Writer

Operating System(s)
Windows System : Microsoft Windows XP/2002 Professional (Win32 x86) 5.01.2600 (Service Pack 2)

Network Services
Network Drivers Enabled : Yes
Adapter : 3Com 3C920B-EMB Integrated Fast Ethernet Controller

Smells like a firewall issue. Did you allow SOF2mp.exe access via the SP2 security center? Any other firewalls? Same thing happened to me years back, finally realized it was Zonealarm. Good luck.

That was it, thanks man, I shoulda thought about that, when ZA asks to set rules for an app it usually kicks you out of the game to allow you to set the trusted app settings. I was completely oblivious to it. =P Thx again!