[Solution/Workaround] Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Locking up/Freezing/Crashing

Hey guys,

I've seen way too many posts about this over and over.

I wanted to consolidate everything into one thread.

As you may know, the hard-locking/freezing/crashing/BSoDing in Battlefield: Bad Company 2 is caused by Punkbuster.

The reason is, Punkbuster is accessing restricted memory locations reserved for hardware (particularly the GPU). (As revealed by Unwinder)

The result is, just about any hardware monitoring program will cause the game to lock up if you are playing in a Punkbuster-protected server on BFBC2 Multiplayer with the software(s) running. (e.g. MSI Afterburner, SAPPHIRE TRIXX, GPU-Z, ASUS iTracker, ASUS SmartDoctor)

Software that comes with your motherboard (like the ASUS overclocking tools) can also cause the BSoD/crash. And many of them can be running in the background without being obvious. For example, ASUS SmartDoctor is still running even after "Exiting". It runs a service called ASDR. Stop it, and stop crashing. I learned this after flashed my 6950 with an ASUS BIOS to use SmartDoctor to extend overclock range (to prevent having to use UnofficialOC Mode in Afterburner).

Solutions/Workarounds:
1. The best solution is to have everyone open EA/Evenbalance support tickets about this very issue. Once there's a large amount of people, they are sure to listen, as hopeless as it may seem at first.

2. The best workaround in my opinion is one provided by Unwinder himself. That is, to stop MSI Afterburner from accessing certain low-level functions of the GPU by neutering it. To do so, all you have to do is navigate to the Afterburner folder and then rename "RTCore.cfg" to anything else (or delete it, but that's not recommended). Do this BEFORE running Afterburner of course. If you already have it running, you'll need to restart Afterburner. This will stop the freezing/crashing in BFBC2 while having Afterburner running, and will preserve your user-defined fan profiles. However, certain features may no longer work (like fan RPM monitoring, which is all I've noticed different other than a much more stable BFBC2 MP gameplay).

TL;DR version: Rename RTCore.cfg

3. Popular, but not recommended workaround: use an older version like v2.0.0. The problem is, these older versions may not be completely compatible with your shiny new GPU. I suggest using workaround #2.

4. Pause monitoring in MSI Afterburner. This was the first working workaround I've found. However, this won't do anything if you have user-defined fan profile as the program continues to monitor and will cause a BSoD if PB tries to scan.

5. The most unwanted workaround: don't use Afterburner or any other monitoring software. This works, but I'm sure most of you here WANT to use Afterburner.

Hope this has helped you all!

Please do consider solution #1 first!


Sources cited:
Unwinder on Afterburner neutering

Unwinder on Punkbuster scanning flaw causing crashes

I guess I'll try testing it, by having GPU-Z running in the background.

BAD news:
I removed my workaround temporarily and used Afterburner. The new PB update made it crash sooner. WAY sooner.

Put my workaround back, working perfectly fine again.

Looks like the new PB update is still a fail.

Glad to help

Tell me those Diamonds are not "real" 6970s