Don't Download PC version from EA, Buy it from a store...

Let me start by saying I loved the Battlefield series from EA and I was impressed enough that I pre-ordered Battlefield 2142 through EA's fancy new download service. It was buggy and I needed to adjust some stuff to get it to work but I got it working though I always had trouble with the larger maps which surprised me because I had just built the computer and it is a fast machine with no more than a firewall in the background. Then the first Patch came and down it went and not just me. The patch EA sent out pretty much turned the punkbuster into spyware. You could run it without PB but 99% of the servers will not allow you in without.

At this time, EA customer Service crawled into a hole and hoped all the people that bought it online would eat each other before they were found. It's been that way every time a new patch comes out.

EA's customer service is almost exclusively handled by email with a usual response time of 24 hours. The responses are often confusing with the reasons for problems but the general fix all is to uninstall the game and reinstall it which if you downloaded it from EA can be another 3 to 5 hours depending on your isp and how many patches you will need to get current. That's on a cable modem...

Bottom line, This game is defective. It should never have been let out of development with this many flaws.