Ex-bf2 player here... I played BF2 regularly and in competition from the day it came out until the patch that nerfed dolphin diving and took a huge chunk of the skill required out. I remember how bad the CTDs were initially, with basically a 33% chance of hitting the desktop after loading. I also remember a patch fixing that, completely eliminating the issue.
A few weeks ago I decided to give the game a try again. I was running XP, and the game was loading fine. I've since switched to Vista 64 bit, and the game crashes every time I try to join a server. It crashes a few seconds into verifying the data. I can host my own server and the game loads, probably because it doesn't have to verify the data. I'm thinking the problem is with Vista/BF2 compatibility. Is there a known issue with BF2 and Vista 64? I'm going to try a reinstall, but it takes so damn long for me with all the patching and cd swapping.
A few weeks ago I decided to give the game a try again. I was running XP, and the game was loading fine. I've since switched to Vista 64 bit, and the game crashes every time I try to join a server. It crashes a few seconds into verifying the data. I can host my own server and the game loads, probably because it doesn't have to verify the data. I'm thinking the problem is with Vista/BF2 compatibility. Is there a known issue with BF2 and Vista 64? I'm going to try a reinstall, but it takes so damn long for me with all the patching and cd swapping.