idiot

I have been reading all the forums lately and it seems that since the last DLC release there have been issues ranging from BSOD to plain, unable to run BF4 at all!! I too have been having problems running BF4 Since the last update. The last time I was able to play the game with no issues was 12/13/14. Now, I haven't been having BSOD's when trying to run the game. But when I would try to start a Multiplayer game it would just hang at the "joining server" screen and then after a few minutes I would get the BF4 Error,, telling me to 1. Restart Origin, 2 .Repair BF4 in Origin, 3. Reboot your PC. If I tried to start in Campaign mode it would just hang stay at the "initializing" Screen and the game would never start..!! This was on Dec 13, just after the new update!! So I spent this entire week trying to fix it!! And I mean all week,, every day, all day & night. I tried everything you can imagine. I am Running Win7 x64 on an Asus M4A78-E MB (NOTE: This has an onboard Radeon 3300 Video card!!, Very important to remember!!), w/ 8GB of Kingston Hyperx DDR2 Ram, A 6 month old XFX Radeon R9 270X DD 2GB DDR5, Toshiba 7200 Rpm 1TB HD,,along with a few other 1Tb drives for storage. And I was using a Kingston SSD 128Gb Drive to hold & run the BF4 game from Exclusively. (I thought the speed might make the game faster). Well, after having it hang for a few days & not getting my fix of frags! I thought it might be a driver issue. So I Updated my AMD Chipset Driver to 14.4, then tried to update my Video Drivers to the new Radeon CCC

2014.1120.2123!! Each time I tried this, the install would Blue Screen halfway thru with an "atihdw76.dll" error. Along with the usual numbers and letters. So I Installed every windows update, turned off all Antivirus and kept trying several more times. No luck. Then I Repaired BF4, Uninstalled BF4 Game, Re-installed game, no luck still hanging. Uninstalled Origin, then Re-installed Origin and Game..Still nothing, just hangingI Read every forum and noticed a lot of people were having the same problem. Saw some people who were able to get the CCC drivers installed if they used The DDU utility to remove their Vid Drivers while in Safe mode. So I tried this, Then re-ran the CCC Vid Driver installation..

 This worked, sorta, but came up with an BSOD error that I couldn't see for some reason.Then I remembered reading in the forums that Another person said the "BSOD" During the driver install was related to the new CCC HDMI audio driver and I should uncheck it during installation. So I DDU's the Vid Drivers (In Safe Mode of course) then I unchecked the HDMI Audio driver during the CCC Installation,, and it Sorta worked, except when I rebooted to Win7 the New CCC driver would show up but with only the basic and no options for the vid card as well as a pop-up telling me there was a newer version of the CCC Drivers available (The one I just tried to install). As well as in device manager my R9 Card had a Exclamation point next to it, but my onboard card did not! I did this about a dozen times or more. Needless to say i tried everything. Then I thought I would disable to onboard Vid card and try it all again. This time the Latest CCC Driver got installed properly, no BSOD or hanging or errors, as long as I unchecked the HDMI Driver during the CCC installation... BUT!! The Game still would just hang at "Initializing" or "Joining Server" then followed by the Battlelog 4 Error report! After doing this for 3 days non-stop.

Then I remembered reading in the forums where someone had the same problem,, and the only thing that fixed it was a Fresh install of Win7, followed by all SP1 and Win updates. Figurng I had nothing to lose. So, using a Kingston 128Gb SSD Drive I had, I unplugged all the other drives,, disabled the onboard vid,, then did a Fresh install of Win7, SP1, followed by all the Windows updates. I was able to install the 14.4 Chipset update,, And when I tried the new CCC Vid Driver, I left all boxes checked, including the HDMI audio,,, It finally installed properly!! And it booted super fast from power button to desktop in 25 seconds, and no issues showing up in Device manager. But when I turned on my onboard Vid card again, Device manager would show the exclamation next to my R9 card and the CCC driver was back to basic with no options as well as telling me there was the new version available!! So I disabled the onboard card again. Rebooted. Then CCC worked fine with all options there and no glitches.. finally after a fresh install of Origin and a fresh download of BF4, then Did a Disk Cleanup of all unneeded files, just for the space on this Small 128Gb drive. I have a little over 30Gb left of free space now!

 But I was nervous as hell..Opened Origin, Started BF4 in Campaign Mode!! And It worked!! Bf4 Worked superfast on the SSD Drive!! Amazing Speed, 25 seconds from the time I push the power button to the windows desktop with all background apps running!! I should have used the SSD for my OS a long time ago. Now I have all the new Chipset & Radeon Drivers,, a super fast PC and Faster Gaming with all Video settings in the game set to "Ultra" with no lag, spikes or hesitation.. Highest framerates I have ever had!!! That Being said,, I have reconnected my old 1Tb HD and added it as a Dual boot option using EasyBCD. Now I have 1 Win7 with all my other apps and music and 1 Win7 just for BF4 that is so fast I am thinking I really dont need to upgrade the MB just yet. Although I may do it anyways and get a 512Gb SSd with a 8-Core 4.0-5.0Ghz CPU,an AMD MB that has a PCIe 3.0, and SATA 6 on it & maybe 16 Gb of DDR3 this time around. As It is so fast but only has so much room. And I would love to see what this R9 270X can do with a PCIe3.0 underneath it with an even faster MB and SSD HD on it.

So,, if any of you have been having the same problem and the same issue when trying to update the new drivers,,, this may be the only thing that fixes it!! Why this fixed it I don't know. But my game worked fast and fine right up until Dec 13, when Origin deployed a new update!! And now I have a faster OS & PC that makes BF4 Look so much better than it ever did, even when I had Dual Radeon 5550's Running in Crossfire Mode. I know a lot of you wont want to hear this as the only way to get the game working again. But,, if you are willing to spend some $$ on an SSD, it is your best option,and when you upgrade you u will already be 1/2 way there! I hope this helps some of you!! Good Luck!!!! I hope all of my frustrations help some of you out,, Thee is hope, although it may not be what you want to hear! I was just lucky to have enough hard drives that it really wasn't an issue. But, I am grateful I still have (2) 1 TB Drives that are still completely empty that I can use for a Raid setup on my next MB...... Good