Dayz has suddenly stopped working, Along with all my Arma Games.

[latiasracer 8]

Hello, i have been afflicted by the all to common "bad serial number" problem, but mine has somewhat of a twist.

I have had arma 2 & it's expansions since the end of december, and i have also played dayz since then. Now, my game has been a little buggy the last week, and has crashed numerious times whilst i've been playing. Last night, i was on a server with some buddies. They where in a helicopter, and they crashed it and died. I transfered their gear into my truck, and was going to hide it away when i got up to the toilet. To keep myself hidden, i jumped in the back of the truck and went AFK. When i came back, my game had crashed (Again!). What i normally have to do in this situation, would be to reinstall the beta patch via dayz commander, then the game would run fine for a while. It gave me the "Bad Serial Number ect" error. And when i tried to reboot the game anyways first it comes up with an error stating : "ArmA 2 OA failed to load file pmc addons/ air_pmc.pbo" then proceeds to load anyway. It gets to DAYZ - Please wait then it comes up with the "bad serial number given in setup" and closes.

I have the same problem when i try to launch either ArmA 2 or Arrowhead via steam (As in to play the vanilla game). If i try to play either BAF or PMC, i get "Can't find ARMA 2 : OA serial number in registry. Please Install ArmA 2 : OA then rerun PMC/BAF setup again.

I also checked the registry, as some guides suggested i do and in my files, A key is clearly present for BAF and PMC, but for ArmA 2 and OA under the KEY file it simply reads : (Zero-Length Binary File) and all that's inside the doc is "0000".

I don't quite understand, one thing i read said that if my key file was full of 0's then that means my key had been stolen. I don't understand how? I didn't download anything atall yesterday (Aside Itunes stuff), and i have never downloaded anything for any of my Arma games except the expansion packs, and that was through steam. And if my key has been stolen, how come they only stole some of the keys, rather than all of them? And how do i go about getting a replacement (I love the arma games as a whole, not just for DayZ). And most importantly, how the hell have my keys been stolen, if i havent downloaded anything nefarious?!

I have already tried validating the game files, and i've attempted to reinstall Arma 2 and OA via steam , to no avail. The only thing left i can think of to try is a total purge from my machine, and i will do that overnight, as it's a good 10-12hrs worth of downloads.

Thanks for your time, and any advice you can give.

Edited April 5, 2013 by Latiasracer

[Kerbo 198]

I'm no expert but it's possible the registry key is corrupt. You could try deleting the ArmA2 and Arma2:OA CD key registry keys, then tell Steam to validate local files. Start straight ArmA2 and Arma2:OA to let them install and ensure they launch without error. After that fire up DayZ. Good luck!

On my system the registry keys are found here:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Bohemia Interactive Studio\ArmA 2

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Bohemia Interactive Studio\ArmA 2 OA

Edited April 5, 2013 by Kerbo

[latiasracer 8]

I'm no expert but it's possible the registry key is corrupt. You could try deleting the ArmA2 and Arma2:OA CD key registry keys, then tell Steam to validate local files. Start straight ArmA2 and Arma2:OA to let them install and ensure they launch without error. After that fire up DayZ. Good luck!

On my system the registry keys are found here:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Bohemia Interactive Studio\ArmA 2

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Bohemia Interactive Studio\ArmA 2 OA

Thanks, i will try this. My system isn't particually stable, i deal with crashes across the board.

Although, my Registry keys are under "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Bohemia Interactive Studio ect" I don't seem to have something called "Wow6432"... Out of interest what OS are you on? I'm using XP home premium.

UPDATE : Tried this, to no avail... Both games give me the "Bad serial number given in setup" error shortly after reaching the bohemian interactive screen... :(

Edited April 5, 2013 by Latiasracer

[Kerbo 198]

I'm on Windows 7, so slightly different registry paths. I thought I had fixed the registry this way but maybe I did re-install. It's been a while so I forget.

If your machine is crashing a lot I would suspect hardware problems, most likely memory. Have you ran a memory test? If not, I recommend making a bootable cd and doing so. http://www.memtest86.com/

[h3retic 224]

-Try running the games as Administrator (surprisingly enough, this thing fixes a lot of problems)

if u didnt do anything (ex: download fake *optimization for arma 2"/scripts), ur key cannot get stolen.

edit: to run as admin, find arma2oa.exe in the game directory, right click on it, properties, compatibility, check run as admin

Edited April 5, 2013 by h3retic

[latiasracer 8]

I'm on Windows 7, so slightly different registry paths. I thought I had fixed the registry this way but maybe I did re-install. It's been a while so I forget.

If your machine is crashing a lot I would suspect hardware problems, most likely memory. Have you ran a memory test? If not, I recommend making a bootable cd and doing so. http://www.memtest86.com/

I will do that, thanks. It's more unstable because i push it to hard, and it's really to old to be running the kinda stuff i try to run on it :P But i will try this, along with a full reinstall overnight. I'll report back tomorrow morning with the results.

[latiasracer 8]

Welp, after a total reinstall, still nothing works. Same old error. Also, after cleaning out the registary and reinstalling i still get the (Zero-Length binary value) for ArmA2's and OA's CD keys....

Anyone know what to do now?

-Try running the games as Administrator (surprisingly enough, this thing fixes a lot of problems)

if u didnt do anything (ex: download fake *optimization for arma 2"/scripts), ur key cannot get stolen.

edit: to run as admin, find arma2oa.exe in the game directory, right click on it, properties, compatibility, check run as admin

Not entirely sure what you mean, i followed these steps but it asks for a password, which i have no idea what that could be. This computer only has 2 accounts, both are listed as admins..?

Edited April 6, 2013 by Latiasracer

[latiasracer 8]

Ok, Update time.

I preformed a system restore, back to a date when the games work. I managed to retrieve my CD keys from the regedit, as this time they where present. However, when i try and run any of the games, i get the same "Bad Serial Number" and the game CTD. If i refresh on my regedit, the CD code has now erased itself, and i'm back at square one.

Does anyone have any idea?

[fully 51]

Have you ran steam as a administrator, then validate your files?

It is the only way it works!

[latiasracer 8]

Have you ran steam as a administrator, then validate your files?

It is the only way it works!

Yup, i have tried that before and after a total clean reinstall :(

Thing is, even if i edit the now blank KEY file and put my keycode in (Which i very cleverly wrote down) as soon as i boot the game it corrupts itself again..

[Kerbo 198]

I've seen some posts where people use a registry cleaner called Ccleaner after uninstalling and deleting the Bohemia registry folders. I can't vouch for this program but it might be worth a try. http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner

[latiasracer 8]

I've seen some posts where people use a registry cleaner called Ccleaner after uninstalling and deleting the Bohemia registry folders. I can't vouch for this program but it might be worth a try. http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner

Oooh, i actually have that installed, i didn't think to use it. Thanks for your continued help!

[Kerbo 198]

Any luck?

[MJZGaming 0]

I am also having the same problem. None of the above solutions worked for me. It must have something to do with the computer unexpectedly shutting down and corrupting the key. I could play Arma 2 fine. The other day I was playing it and my power went out and the computer shut off as well. It was after that the "bad serial number" problem happened.

Edited August 6, 2013 by MJZGaming

[DayZDumbass 0]

MJZ same to me, onLaptop it works fine. Only on my PC I got that problem... And really nothing worked...

[MJZGaming 0]

I emailed Bohemian Interactive and I received a list of possible solutions. I tried every one of them and after restarting my computer, I was able to play Arma II/DayZ again. I'm not really sure which solution worked, or whether it was a combination of multiple solutions. I hope this helps.

 

"Hello,

there are several possible fixes for this issue, please read carefully:

1) Please run the Steam application as Administrator:
1. Exit Steam.
2. Right-click on Steam icon.
3. Left-click on "Run As Administrator".
4. If the problem persists, reboot your computer and try the procedure
again.


2) DELETE ARMA 2 OA REGISTRY ENTRIES
1. Exit Steam, open Start menu and type this directly into the menu (in
Windows XP, you will have to click on "Run" first):
regedit

2. Press Enter.

3. In regedit window, click on HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE.

4. Press CTRL+F to bring up search.

5. Look for "ArmA 2 OA" (without the quotes).

6. Delete all the "ArmA 2 OA" entries you find from the registry.

7. Run Steam as Administrator.

8. Right-click on the game in Steam Library.

9. Click on "Properties".

10. Select "Local files" tab and click on "Verify integrity of game
cache files" button.

11. Please wait, the process can take several minutes.


3) REINSTALL STEAM
1. Go to Steam's installation folder.
2. Delete everything there except "steam.exe" and "steamapps" folder.
3. Run "steam.exe" - Steam will reinstall itself automatically.


4) RUNNING ARMA 2 OA DIRECTLY WITHOUT STEAM
1. Go to Steam's installation folder.
2. Navigate to steamapps/common/arma 2 operation arrowhead.
3. Directly run arma2oa.exe (please note that you might not see the
".exe" extension)."