# Solved: Battle for middle earth, Everyone Dies after a few minuets



## cybersloth (Dec 16, 2009)

My friend has BFME from EA 2004

when a game is started it works fine for a short period then all units die/are destroyed unexpectidly

He is running Win7 Home Premium, 'upgraded from vista' on a dell studio with:
Core 2 Duo E7400 2.8Ghz
3GB RAM
ATI Radion HD4300 512MB

He had it on an XP machine and it worked ok.

any help is appreciated

c..


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## Megabite (Apr 5, 2008)

Try running it in Compatibility mode

Also has he installed it in the C directory

Had some problems like that myself had to uninstall it and re-install the game and it worked OK C&C


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## cybersloth (Dec 16, 2009)

Thanks for that,
I have recomended that he install win7 from scrach as upgrades just don't flow like a cleen install. and the game will have to be reinstalled any way.

Do you know if C:\ is the defalt install destination? as he would have installed it there.


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## Megabite (Apr 5, 2008)

Yes it should install it there by default be "C:\Program Files\

Just get him to check that is the case

Also W7 has been known not to install the folder needed in My Documents on older games like C&C ZeroHour


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## Mosquito555 (Apr 25, 2007)

Either your copy of the game is pirated or EA's anti-piracy system is not compatible with Win7.

What you experience is the result of EA's anti piracy system. If it detects that you are running an illegal copy of the game your units will just die after a few minutes.

Unfortunately, we can't help with pirated software, you should check the forum rules again. If your game is legal you should download and install the latest updates from EA. 

If I'm not mistaken there's an auto update function on BFM II...It will work if your game is legit so try this first. I can't provide any direct links to the updates as there's no way to know for sure if your copy is legal or not...Sorry.


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## cybersloth (Dec 16, 2009)

You seem to know more about games than me but my friend is in his 60's and has the original box, book and disk, it would be extreamly unlikley that any of the retail chains where he purchases his games would be selling pirate copies.

I understand the rules about piracy on techguy and would not have asked if i was unsure of the legitimasy of the software in question.

He may still have the game installed on his old machine, could this some how triger a copy protection reaction? do you think uninstalling from the previous machine would make it work?

I will recomend game updates, and let everyone know how we go


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## Mosquito555 (Apr 25, 2007)

cybersloth said:


> You seem to know more about games than me but my friend is in his 60's and has the original box, book and disk, it would be extreamly unlikley that any of the retail chains where he purchases his games would be selling pirate copies.
> 
> I understand the rules about piracy on techguy and would not have asked if i was unsure of the legitimasy of the software in question.


I'm sorry, I didn't mean to be rude but it's not uncommon for people to ignore the forum rules and ask questions about pirated software anyhow. 



cybersloth said:


> He may still have the game installed on his old machine, could this some how triger a copy protection reaction? do you think uninstalling from the previous machine would make it work?


I'm not sure about BFM and BFM II but other Electronic Arts games implemented DRM anti piracy technologies. So yeah, it's possible that if the game is installed on more than one computers it won't work (if both computers have an internet connection).

In other words yeah, uninstalling the game from his old machine is worth a try.



cybersloth said:


> I will recomend game updates, and let everyone know how we go


I hope that updating the game will fix your problems. As I said, the copy protection mechanism could be incompatible with Windows 7.

If nothing works you can try contacting EA's tech support.


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## cybersloth (Dec 16, 2009)

It's Fixed

Thanks for your help guys, we uninstalled the game from both pc's and reinstalled it only on the new one, game works fine now, appears that it was to do with EA copyright, that's a cheeky one.

everybody's dead dave
dave everybody's dead
dead dave everybody's

hehe...

cheers 
c..


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