Well I still can't play this :(

[Zofo]

yeah I am getting the same network error when trying to join games, looks like the only way to solve it is to DMZ my router or bypass it alltogether, both of which i would not do just to play a game

Hopefully EA pull their finger out and fix it but I won't be holding my breath, have lots of work to do atm at home (after I come home from work ) so I am fine with it

Also my gfx are fucked up in the single player with the top portion of the screen going black in many places, I haven't updated my drivers for ages so I would imagine that would sort the problem


anyways hf coz I can't

[DevilsRefugee]

ouch man, that sucks.

wish i could help like 

good luck though.

[azurescorch]

Even if you could connect you'd be kicked every few seconds by punk-buster.
ffs. fu punk buster.

[Rhi]

http://forums.electronicarts.co.uk/battlefield-bad-company-2-pc/924856-retail-bfbc2-ports.html

Try this Zofo.

[Zofo]

Cheers Rhi but I am not a big fan of opening ports, other games don't require this so I will just wait for them to fix it

[Paranoia]

Do you have any reasons for not wanting to open ports, Zofo?

[EDIT] Never mind, just read the other thread, and the link, there is clearly some issues with the game - sounds like port forwarding doesn't necessarily work anyway.

I could have fun trying to connect from Uni. My copy arrived today, installing tomorrow. [/EDIT]

[Zofo]

I was lead to believe that opening ports makes your pc more vulnerable?   Have to say i don't fully understand it all but other games work without me opening ports, I did try opening ports for the beta but that didn't work 

[Zeus]

This here may be helpful

[Paranoia]

I was lead to believe that opening ports makes your pc more vulnerable?   Have to say i don't fully understand it all but other games work without me opening ports, I did try opening ports for the beta but that didn't work 

Not really, though someone may correct me.

Basically, open ports mean that remote servers/clients can initiate connections to you. That is, suppose you are hosting a website on your PC, then you need to open port 80, so that a connection can be intiated by those who want to view the website.

So, the only difference is that an attacker can initiate a connection to something listening to any open ports. More than one thing cannot listen on one port, so if BF2 is listening, an attacker can only initiate a connection to BF2 by using that open port.

The only time opening ports becomes a security concern is if:

a) your system is compromised, and you open a port that something malicious is listening on
b) your system is running a certain version of certain software that has a security hole.

Case b) is the greater concern. If your system is compromised it's likely that any malicious software will initiate connections itself.

So, it is possible that an exploit could be found to run remote commands by initiating a connection with BF2 if you opened the ports, but I don't think this is really a great concern. It's far more probably that opening up to an http server, or a telnet server, or an ssh server would be exploitable.

The above is mostly taken from my head, and I imagine I have something wrong somewhere, but hopefully someone will come and correct me and we can all learn together.

[Zofo]

cool, I shall give it a go later

[frymaster]

that list of ports appears to be only outgoing ports i.e. if you have a corporate firewall and need to explicitly allow outgoing connections.  It's a lot vaguer than it needs to be, but it implies you don't need to use port forwarding (which is what people mean 99% of the time when they talk about opening ports on home NAT routers)

buried in that thread are other possible causes though.  If your router has something like DPI (deep packet inspection, and no I don't have a clue where that would be) it could be worth turning it off.  Ditto if it has some kind of anti-flood / anti-DOS "security" setting - those things are worse than useless for home connections and are infamous for getting paranoid about innocuous things

[Zeus]

cool, I shall give it a go later

ROFL - nearly choked when I read that as it translates as ' thanks for the input guys, but I wait for EA to fix it as I'm busy in rl'

[Zofo]

cool, I shall give it a go later

ROFL - nearly choked when I read that as it translates as ' thanks for the input guys, but I wait for EA to fix it as I'm busy in rl'

hehe, you know me too well

[Rhi]

http://forum.ea.com/eaforum/posts/list/90/444473.page

Is interesting.  Apparently if IE does not work, EA autoupdater does not work.

[frymaster]

reading what he's done, it's not about IE per se; it's about the global network settings (which apply to IE, MSN messenger, BITS, and anything else that cares to use them) - he had an http proxy set.  It just so happens that firefox ignores the system settings and uses its own way of configuring proxies, but anything else that might want to access the web might not.