Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Bugs

[WangChung]

I just finished my new build over last weekend and wanted to treat myself to some game time. I downloaded and installed BC2
on basically brand new equipment with a fresh install. My roommate had been having issues with the game hard locking the
computer accompanied by a very rapid sound loop varying in pitch depending on what just happened in game.

I thought it may be due to Asus' GamerOSD or one of the other programs that I regretfully installed on his computer when I
was building it. GamerOSD is/was causing severe stuttering and lag when camera turning in World of Warcraft. Even with all
the settings turned all the way DOWN which there should be no reason to do so (he's got a comparable system to mine, less 1 GPU)
the game would drop to a PowerPoint presentation if he tried to swivel his camera around. After some research I uninstalled
GamerOSD from his computer and it completely fixed it. I made sure that I didn't load the programs on my computer so I
should have been good to go.

Well I finally get everything loaded, start playing for 5 minutes and then I got the same thing. On top of that,
there was a new issue of when the computer wasn't locking up the screen was going black but the mini-map and the
HUD were still visible. I thought maybe my settings were too high, that didn't fix it. Cards maybe overheating? Went into CCC
and cranked the fans to 100% and same thing. This definitely wasn't hardware related.......

I spent the next 4 hours reading various threads online and compiling information; some say its related to Realtek audio
drivers and others say it's a PSU issue or an overclock issue. Both of our computers currently have more than adequate power
supplies, no Realtek audio, and definitely stock clocks.

A few people mentioned that they started experiencing the problem after PunkBuster released an automatic update to their
software, and that brought me to an epiphany. PunkBuster.......... it has and for the foreseeable future will continue to be a
blight on the gamer community second only to Sony rootkits. I remember when PB was causing headaches almost a decade
ago from my MOH days.

There wasn't a general consensus on how directly PunkBuster was causing the issues, some folks thought that it was a conflict
between MSI Afterburner and PB. At the time I hadn't even installed it yet though. It had to be some sort of conflict between
3 things; ATI drivers, the game itself, and PB. It couldn't be the drivers primarily at fault as I had logged 3 hours of Furmark @
+20% PowerTune, 10 hours of CS Source at highest settings and 3 hours of WoW at highest settings. The issue was happening
regardless what version of drivers I tried, so I thought about a different approach of uninstalling PB ONLY and reinstalling. After
a few trials and errors, I finally cracked the code!

Great! So now the game is running without crashing my multi-thousand dollar rig, I'm still getting these black screens like my
soldier is blinking like he got dust in his eye or something. Very inconvenient when you're in the middle of a firefight. The cards
definitely aren't overheating, and the settings are on the equivalent of a drawing in crayon. Again, more hours on the internet
researching and turns out this fix was a lot easier. The nice looking bloom effect in the game is broken! Funny enough, evidence
suggests that this is an issue that only affects higher end graphics equipment. So if you go mid-rage build then you're fine, but
if you go balls to the wall Xtreme (ahem) then you're screwed. Turning off Bloom while detracting from your viewing pleasure
lets the game actually be played without further issue.

Bottom line - EA and PunkBuster need to fire their coders and start over. That, and they need to actually look into fixing things
that are broke. Apparently reports of these issues have been going back since the game was in beta......

Anyway, enough story time. Here are the fixes.

BUG - Battlefield Bad Company 2 hard locking machine with rapid sound loop, only able to get out by hard reset of machine.
FIX -

1. Download the latest PunkBuster client DIRECTLY from their website, choose the version based on your operating system.
2. Uninstall PunkBuster from Add/Remove Programs or Programs & Features depending on your version of Windows.
3. In X:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\Steamapps\Common\BFBC2 delete the PB folder. There may also be a PB folder in your My Documents
   or Users\Documents folder, delete that too.
4. Completely uninstall all video drivers and related control panels.
   - 4a: You many also need to uninstall MSI Afterburner, I'm not certain if this may cause a conflict as I didn't have it installed at the
   time. I'd say uninstall it just to be safe.
5. Reboot, and when the system comes back up DO NOT install video drivers just yet.
6. In X:\Program Files (x86)\ create a folder called PunkBuster and extract the client you downloaded to this location. The reason
   we're doing this manually is PB neglects to tell you that this PBSetup file sits and plops down wherever its at and creates all of its config
   files for wherever it is at the time.
7. Run the PBSetup file, and add whatever games you play that have to use PunkBuster from its drop-down list. You then may have to
   navigate to the folder where the game files are at. In this case, this is just back at the
   "X:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\Steamapps\Common\BFBC2"
8. Close the program and REBOOT.
9. Install your video card drivers and whatever control panels, and you should be good to go.

Somehow, the automatic update version of the client via Steam is messed up and causing this issue. When I ran the standalone
install for PB it works fine now.

BUG - While playing BF: BC2 you get intermittent black screens for your field of view, but the HUD/minimap still show.
FIX -

1. Go to "\(My) Documents\BFBC2" and there should be a file called "settings.ini." Open this file with Notepad by either right clicking
   or just going to Notepad and opening via directory.
2. Scroll down until you see a value for Bloom (NOT HSAO!!), and set it to "false."
3. As an additional measure if you'd like, if you have high end equipment you can set DirectX to from "Auto" to "11" to get the
   best experience.
4. Save and close the file.

I can now play at 2058x1536 @ 85Hz with 8xMSAA and 16xAF with highest detail settings without one single hiccup. Hooray!

Hope this works for the weary internet traveler that happens upon this thread. Good luck!