Aceri

It's been a while... wonder if this helped anybody.

Legend: - Introduction - Problem - Steps - Closing ------ Introduction Hi everybody, I just started playing DayZ last night and I encountered that "Bad Serial/Kicked from server/ect.," problem when trying to play with my brother who already owns the game and plays it a lot. I spent about an hour trying everything I read on these forums to fix the problem for me but nothing worked until I started playing around with things myself and I found out how to make it work for me when none of the other processes people were suggesting worked. My method is a mix of what I've found on the forums and what I did on my own so some of the steps will look familiar. Before though I will give a little information about my situation so you all know more about what my problem was. ------- Problem My brother just bought himself a new PC and it arrived yesterday as of this post. My computer was an old one, about nine years old, so when he got his new PC he gave me his old one, which is only about a year or two old. DayZ is one of his favorite games, and so he bought me a copy of Arma 2 so that we could play DayZ together. He already had the game set up on the PC he gave me from before, and so when I went to join a server he was in, I would constantly either crash to desktop or get kicked from the server he was in before fully loading into the game. After figuring out what was happening and looking through these forums to try and find a solution but coming up with nothing helping we both got discouraged. My brother got bummed out because he wanted someone to play with, and I got angry because it felt like he wasted $30 on a game for me that we simply couldn't play together. Then after we both sighed and gave up I figured I would just play around with some files and see what worked, backing up files in each stage of my "playing" in the event it didn't work I could go back to scratch. This is ultimately what I did to be able to get rid of these problems and be able to play with my brother. Like I said earlier, this is a mixture of what I found on here as well as my own workings so some of it will look familiar. ------- Steps Step One: -Go to Start > Search Programs and Files -Type in "regedit.exe" to find and launch the registry editor -Click on Edit and then Find and type in "Bohemia Interactive" without quotations (spelling on the companies name may be wrong in this post) NOTE: For me the first time I did this, it only showed up "Bohemia Interactive Studios", not that AND "Bohemia Interactive". Don't worry, it just went for the first it saw, go ahead and delete that one as well. -Delete Bohemia Interactive and Bohemia Interactive Studios. If you only find "Bohemia Interactive Studios" it's okay. Side-Step: -If you only find Bohemia Interactive Studios, then after you delete that one, scroll up until you see the primary folders. (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE ect..) NOTE: There is a x32 and x64bit version of the folder, however I only have Windows 7 x32bit so there was only one for me, but some of you might see two. In the event you do have a x32bit and a x64bit in there, choose whichever one your current OS is, whether it be x32 or x64bit. -Once in the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE folder for your OS version, scroll down until you see both "Bohemia Interactive" and "Bohemia Interactive Studios", delete both of them. Step Two: (Not sure if nessisary or not) -After doing that, restart steam and go to your Arma 2 and Arma 2 expansion in your library -Right click on each of them and go to properties -Go to the Local Files tab and click on "Verify Integrity of Game Cashe" for both Arma 2 and it's expansion and let each game scan through for anything missing. NOTE: Mine found 1 file missing for both Arma 2 and OA, but that I believe was prior to doing the regedit. This step might not be nessisary at all for you. -Launch both Arma 2 and OA once. NOTE: If you get "No serial detected in Setup" or something similar, don't worry we're getting to that part. Step Three: -Go to My Computer > Local Disk C > Program Files > Steam > Steamapps > Common > Arma 2 -Inside you should find a .vdf file, 33910_install.vdf and open it IMPORTANT NOTE: Be careful how you choose to open it, if you don't know what you're doing you could make all files of that type open wrongly and cause problems down the line. I don't have a file opening program, although I am sure some of you do so it wont be a problem. If you are like me and don't, then what I did was: Right Click > Open > Select a program from a list of installed programs > Uncheck "Always open this type of file with this program" box so it doesn't convert every file type into Notepad or whatever program you chose to view it as. -Search for where it says "Arma 2 CD Key" and then next to it in { }, copy paste your Arma 2 CD key (Ex. {44wa-2412s-5312-sa} ect,,) NOTE: If the {} are not there, add them in front and at the end of the CD Key. Make sure it is actually { and not [. -Once you've done that, save the file then go back into your steam/steamapps/common folder and go inside the Arma 2 OA file and do the same thing. There are two files inside the OA that the CD Key needs to be added to, 33930_install.vdf and 33933_install.vdf NOTE: As previously stated the way the text inside shows up to you might not be the same for me, so just look carefully. One of the .vdfs had the information loaded up differently, going down like a list instead of straight across like in the standard Arma 2 file. In that case, I scrolled down until I found where it said "Arma 2 CD Key" and above it there was a { with no }, I took a gamble and pasted the Arma 2 OA CD Key there and put a } at the end of it and it seemed to work. Step Four: (Possibly not nessisary, but I did this anyways) -After you put in the CD Keys in the files where they belonged, validate the integrity of both games again like in the previous step -Once that has finished, launch both of the games again just like in the previous step ------ Closing After I did all of that I was finally able to connect to a game with my brother, and it's been a day since that we have been playing together and have not enountered a problem where we were unable to play together. There does seem to be one minor issue, which may just be a DayZ problem, but I think it's worth mentioning. If my brother and I try to connect to the same server at the same time, then one of us will crash or get some other various error. All that we need to do is when we encounter that problem, let one person log in first then once they're in the other person can.log in just fine. We did log in on occasion at the same time which is what leads me to believe that that itself is just a DayZ bug. I hope this helps at least some of you who are unable to play due to reasons like mine. Registry editing is risky though and if you remove the wrong thing you could screw your entire PC up, so do so at your own risk. If you do decide to follow my steps, then just take it slow. Don't want to accidentally forget to uncheck the box when editing the files or something and be screwed. Also I know this is a long post so I added a Legend for easy navigation if you don't care about all the jargan I talked about at the very beginning. If my steps seem to cause confusions when it comes to the .vdf files then if you guys ask for it I could maybe take a screenshot of where I put the keys or something.