Today, I have finally seen the first 40 minutes of Far Cry 2 on PC. Or, to be more precise, I've seen the first two minutes of the game about twenty times in a row. That's because over two months after the game's release, I've finally figured out how to dispell The Jackal's Curse -- and over the course of a half-dozen reinstalls and numerous reboots this evening, discovered exactly what setting I managed to mess with in order to fix the problem.
If I'm right -- we're very, very lucky -- and you still care enough about the game at this point to give it another go -- then there just might be an incredibly easy fix for Far Cry 2's infamous third loading screen freeze, awaiting you just after the jump.
PC configurations being what they are -- different from user to user -- I'll be entirely honest: the likelihood is that what worked for me will not work for you. The chances are slim. But given that the one unifying factor among those who bore the Jackal's Curse on Ubisoft's Far Cry 2 technical support forums was a Creative Sound Blaster card based on the Audigy 2 series -- I proudly use an Audigy 2 Platinum EX myself -- and the fix I discovered involves sound -- I will ask that you humor me and give it a quick try, just in case.
Step One: Uninstall, unvalidate, and otherwise entirely remove Far Cry 2 from your computer system. Tell the application not to keep your save games or configuration files.
Step Two: After disabling your firewall or allowing exceptions, reinstall, allow Punkbuster to install, launch the game, allow it to autoupdate to version 1.02 (the latest patch, finally released this December without a single technical fix mentioned in the release notes), quit out, and restart your computer.
Step Three: Launch the game, go to the Options menu, go to Sound, and turn off Music. Click "Apply."
Step Four: Go back to the Main Menu, choose Story Mode, choose New Story, choose Normal, pick a character and begin your new game.
Step Five: Should you get past the third loading screen, shout "Hallelujah," hit Esc, go to Options, then Sound, and turn your music back on.
That's it -- I just turned off my music, and it worked. Not only that, but it continued to work, even when I subsequently tried to start another new story with the music setting still turned on afterwards. It was only after a reinstall, or after resetting the sound options to "default," that my game once again began freezing at the third loading screen.
I know what you're thinking -- if it's so simple, why didn't anyone figure it out until now? Probably because before, this method didn't work. Testing with an unpatched 1.00 and patched 1.01 versions, my game froze as normal even after disabling music. It seems that the recent 1.02 patch did change something important. If only the patch didn't require the counter-intuitive changing of a user setting to fix the issue, Ubisoft could probably take all the credit.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. Having spent many hours on this, I'm confident that this fix will work for my machine 100% of the time. But if after following my directions precisely, you still cannot even see the beginning of your game, well, I apologize. I thought it best to share what good news I had on the off-chance it might help, and I hope that Ubisoft will soon provide you a fix as well.
Whether the fix works or no, please, let us know in the comments below!
man i dont understand why this game wont work for me.... i play crysis,crysis warhead,cod4-5, and gears of war just fine. since you found your fix i wonder if i could disable my sound card and the game will work? I use a SB X-FI Xtremegamer sound card btw. if you got any ideas plz post them up here!
I played this some in the fall last year using the "windowed while loading, fullscreen while playing" workaround and got to 65% completion before moving to Fallout 3 and other games for awhile.
Today I figured I'd check to see if the problem had been fixed and get back to playing again, and was excited to find this post in my searches.
After patching to 1.02, I didn't want to start over at the beginning so I kept my save files and deleted GamerProfile.xml in hopes that this trick would still work. I'm sad to report I still have the load freeze bug, so starting a new game is probably a necessary part of the fix. I'll stick to the other workaround to finish the game and then shelve it. I'll be wary of anything Ubisoft puts out from here on.
@Adam: I'm sorry to hear that this didn't work for you, either... Experimenting some more myself, it seems like the only thing the the Music setting does is to change a single value in the config file from one to zero... but when I change that same setting in the config file, rather than through the GUI, it continues to freeze for me. There must be something else at work here.
i asked ubisoft if they could fix my thrid load screen issues and they gave me the exact same instructions as you said in this article...
they said they are trying to figure out why some soundcards are messing up load games. so if i hear anything ill let you guys know.
Kinda works for me. Seems I have a 50/50 chance of the game freezing up. But I guess it's better than 100%!
I must admit I'm surprised this problem didn't come up in the reviews I read. Maybe all the professional reviewers out there don't have Audigy based cards?
Thanks for this, I tried it last night but it didnt work for me so FC2 is shelved again, just after I found your page I got an email from the ppl at ubisoft with your fix to the letter LOL and because I didnt have time to attempt this until yesterday I missed the 2 day rule from the support at ubisoft so they have assumed my support ticket is solved the cheek of some developers. I will think hard before I buy another game from ubisoft.
BTW I am using an x-fi card with all the latest drivers and every other game I have installed work
When I was playing Far Cry 2, I could not get the full screen game play.
The screen appeared in Windows Screen... Very bad looking, I think..
But, I didn't get it when I installed the game a week ago...
I went to option of the game, and I got no "windows-mode".
So, I couldn't change back to full-screen mode....
What should I do? Is it the bug?
But, when I opened the far cry-benchmark, the options had that choice,
the windows screen or the full screen?
@Grey: Even one success makes the article worthwhile. Congrats!
@Zach, James: The exact same instructions? Interesting... Sorry to hear it didn't work. Yes, the Support Ticket system is rather broken, isn't it.
@Gilmore: Many pro reviewers have more or less state-of-the-art systems in order to adequately analyze graphics and audio quality. This, of course, only serves those who can afford such rigs themselves. My rig is always a little behind the times so as to be cost-effective, and (I like to think) so as to better serve Joe Gamer.
But also, though the sound card seems to be the unifying factor, the issue almost certainly has to do with more than *just* the Audigy-based cards -- if every gamer with an Audigy-based card had this issue, the numbers would be so significant that I can't imagine Ubisoft could have ignored it this long. I can't think what the second factor might be tho. People reporting the issue on the forums had all manner of systems, both Intel and AMD chips, single-core and dual-core, etc.
@Buddy Lie:
That sounds like a different issue. There may be help for you on the Ubisoft Tech Support forums -- try using the search function there and looking for "windowed" and/or "full screen."
Im from Sweden and my English is not the best but i give it a try.
Í have read and tried evreything i found on google but still cant get this f-cking game to work, i bought it for 5 days now and have not played one singel minute!
Your fix....WORKED for me! I am so happy I can finally play a game I paid over $100AUD for! As far as I am concerned - the FarCry 2 community is in your debt. Thank you so much!
Well Sean, thanks for help, but it didn't work for me. This isn't fair, We give a lot of money for a f*cking game that doesn't work. And how comes that the game developers and game raters like gamespot never get a faulty game!!?? So what can We do now? Wait for a fix that (I think) wont come because Ubisoft doesn't care. Why don't We sign a petition people, they can't give us a product that doesn't work, who's in for signing?
I too suffered from the Jackals Curse (stuck at 3rd loading screen). I have an creative x-fi sound card (seems like everyone who has this problem has either older audigy or x-fi) Disabling the music worked for me sometimes, other times it didn't. Sometimes it would take 10 tries before it worked.
I finally have something that seems to work 100% of the time, and it makes no sense to me what so ever. If I leave Azureas bit torrent client open, the game loads normal 100% of the time, whether music is enabled or not. Don't even need any active uploads / downloads, just have it open. This doesn't make any sense to me, but it solved it for me. If I close azureas, the jackals curse comes back. I haven't tried any other programs. (other bit torrent, or p2p might do it)
A hint for anyone experimenting with solutions, do alt + e to switch the game to windowed mode while you load it up, that way if it goes foul, it will let you ctrl + alt + del out of it. Otherwise the game fucks you so hard that you need to press the reset button on your computer.
Hi,
other way to fix the bug is if you tick the option "Run this program in the compatibility mode for: " in FC2Launcher.exe properties -> Compatibility mode
January 3rd, 2009 at 8:24 am
Omg hope this works for me to !
January 3rd, 2009 at 9:01 am
man i dont understand why this game wont work for me.... i play crysis,crysis warhead,cod4-5, and gears of war just fine. since you found your fix i wonder if i could disable my sound card and the game will work? I use a SB X-FI Xtremegamer sound card btw. if you got any ideas plz post them up here!
January 3rd, 2009 at 2:10 pm
I played this some in the fall last year using the "windowed while loading, fullscreen while playing" workaround and got to 65% completion before moving to Fallout 3 and other games for awhile.
Today I figured I'd check to see if the problem had been fixed and get back to playing again, and was excited to find this post in my searches.
After patching to 1.02, I didn't want to start over at the beginning so I kept my save files and deleted GamerProfile.xml in hopes that this trick would still work. I'm sad to report I still have the load freeze bug, so starting a new game is probably a necessary part of the fix. I'll stick to the other workaround to finish the game and then shelve it. I'll be wary of anything Ubisoft puts out from here on.
January 5th, 2009 at 11:35 pm
@Adam: I'm sorry to hear that this didn't work for you, either... Experimenting some more myself, it seems like the only thing the the Music setting does is to change a single value in the config file from one to zero... but when I change that same setting in the config file, rather than through the GUI, it continues to freeze for me. There must be something else at work here.
January 7th, 2009 at 12:27 pm
i asked ubisoft if they could fix my thrid load screen issues and they gave me the exact same instructions as you said in this article...
they said they are trying to figure out why some soundcards are messing up load games. so if i hear anything ill let you guys know.
January 7th, 2009 at 6:51 pm
Well, for what it's worth, I followed the instruction in this guide and
now the game works perfectly (so far that is). At least, this method
works for two people. Thank you, Sean!
January 8th, 2009 at 10:19 am
Kinda works for me. Seems I have a 50/50 chance of the game freezing up. But I guess it's better than 100%!
I must admit I'm surprised this problem didn't come up in the reviews I read. Maybe all the professional reviewers out there don't have Audigy based cards?
January 10th, 2009 at 9:38 am
Thanks for this, I tried it last night but it didnt work for me so FC2 is shelved again, just after I found your page I got an email from the ppl at ubisoft with your fix to the letter LOL and because I didnt have time to attempt this until yesterday I missed the 2 day rule from the support at ubisoft so they have assumed my support ticket is solved the cheek of some developers. I will think hard before I buy another game from ubisoft.
BTW I am using an x-fi card with all the latest drivers and every other game I have installed work
January 10th, 2009 at 9:52 am
does anyone know if a certain audio driver works with far cry 2? i have a SB X-FI Xtremegamer sound card.
January 11th, 2009 at 2:31 am
Hi.. Sean...
When I was playing Far Cry 2, I could not get the full screen game play.
The screen appeared in Windows Screen... Very bad looking, I think..
But, I didn't get it when I installed the game a week ago...
I went to option of the game, and I got no "windows-mode".
So, I couldn't change back to full-screen mode....
What should I do? Is it the bug?
But, when I opened the far cry-benchmark, the options had that choice,
the windows screen or the full screen?
January 11th, 2009 at 3:43 am
@Grey: Even one success makes the article worthwhile. Congrats!
@Zach, James: The exact same instructions? Interesting... Sorry to hear it didn't work. Yes, the Support Ticket system is rather broken, isn't it.
@Gilmore: Many pro reviewers have more or less state-of-the-art systems in order to adequately analyze graphics and audio quality. This, of course, only serves those who can afford such rigs themselves. My rig is always a little behind the times so as to be cost-effective, and (I like to think) so as to better serve Joe Gamer.
But also, though the sound card seems to be the unifying factor, the issue almost certainly has to do with more than *just* the Audigy-based cards -- if every gamer with an Audigy-based card had this issue, the numbers would be so significant that I can't imagine Ubisoft could have ignored it this long. I can't think what the second factor might be tho. People reporting the issue on the forums had all manner of systems, both Intel and AMD chips, single-core and dual-core, etc.
@Buddy Lie:
That sounds like a different issue. There may be help for you on the Ubisoft Tech Support forums -- try using the search function there and looking for "windowed" and/or "full screen."
January 11th, 2009 at 12:15 pm
Im wondering if a later version on my soundcard drivers will work with far cry 2? whatca think?
January 17th, 2009 at 7:58 am
@Buddy Lie: Press Alt+Enter to get back to fullscreen.
January 18th, 2009 at 1:26 pm
Im from Sweden and my English is not the best but i give it a try.
Í have read and tried evreything i found on google but still cant get this f-cking game to work, i bought it for 5 days now and have not played one singel minute!
Please god send me a bugfix soon.
February 9th, 2009 at 3:25 am
Sean mate,
Your fix....WORKED for me! I am so happy I can finally play a game I paid over $100AUD for! As far as I am concerned - the FarCry 2 community is in your debt. Thank you so much!
February 9th, 2009 at 9:17 am
@katalyst_au:
I'm glad to be of service!
April 19th, 2009 at 1:04 am
Well Sean, thanks for help, but it didn't work for me. This isn't fair, We give a lot of money for a f*cking game that doesn't work. And how comes that the game developers and game raters like gamespot never get a faulty game!!?? So what can We do now? Wait for a fix that (I think) wont come because Ubisoft doesn't care. Why don't We sign a petition people, they can't give us a product that doesn't work, who's in for signing?
May 6th, 2009 at 11:39 pm
I too suffered from the Jackals Curse (stuck at 3rd loading screen). I have an creative x-fi sound card (seems like everyone who has this problem has either older audigy or x-fi) Disabling the music worked for me sometimes, other times it didn't. Sometimes it would take 10 tries before it worked.
I finally have something that seems to work 100% of the time, and it makes no sense to me what so ever. If I leave Azureas bit torrent client open, the game loads normal 100% of the time, whether music is enabled or not. Don't even need any active uploads / downloads, just have it open. This doesn't make any sense to me, but it solved it for me. If I close azureas, the jackals curse comes back. I haven't tried any other programs. (other bit torrent, or p2p might do it)
A hint for anyone experimenting with solutions, do alt + e to switch the game to windowed mode while you load it up, that way if it goes foul, it will let you ctrl + alt + del out of it. Otherwise the game fucks you so hard that you need to press the reset button on your computer.
Fuck ubisoft.
May 9th, 2009 at 9:34 am
Hi,
other way to fix the bug is if you tick the option "Run this program in the compatibility mode for: " in FC2Launcher.exe properties -> Compatibility mode
May 10th, 2009 at 10:28 am
voyager, the compatibility mode seems to work for about half of the cases, mine unfortunately wasn't one of them