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GeneralSkruf1's avatar
GeneralSkruf1
Rising Rookie
8 days ago
Solved

BF2042 - Failed to launch game - and further problems with EA app/licensing

I've been struggling since 19.08.25 getting the game to launch. Seems like it happened after BF6 Open Beta, which worked just fine. I have reinstalled 4 times, repaired every possible file, updated, ...
anticheat
bug
crashing
launching
pc
  • GeneralSkruf1's avatar
    GeneralSkruf1
    4 days ago

    It's been over 30 hours of troubleshooting, reading forums, asking AI and so on.. Turned out to be quite a rare fault that even reinstalling windows did't fix, even though its in the "%WinDir%\System32\Drivers\Etc". Windows keeps installing the "hosts"-file dating 2019. Every Windows installments probably has the same file/date. It did not look corrupted running the SFC command, but

    DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /Restorehealth

     made some corrections. I never got any error message leading here, but i stumbled across this thread, that suddenly made BF2042 launch again, and also BF3 / BF4 not having the invalid licenses anymore.

    Probable cause: Not having system updated IP/contact with EA servers. All the games running Javelin Anticheat (e.g. FC25, BF2042, WRC, F1) usually never returned any error messages. Only a few times they said "Could not launch the game due to an error on our part", every other game provided this error:

     

    EA_Shepard​   [Resolved] EA app Error Code EC:204

     

    • EA App's Cache (Top Left Menu > Help > App Recovery)
    • EA App - Repair (My Collection > Tile Dots > Repair)
    • Run the System File Checker tool
    • Change UAC Controls within Windows
    • Reset Windows Host File
    • Unplug your modem/router for 5 minutes and attempt to launch again
GeneralSkruf1's avatar
GeneralSkruf1
Rising Rookie
4 days ago

It's been over 30 hours of troubleshooting, reading forums, asking AI and so on.. Turned out to be quite a rare fault that even reinstalling windows did't fix, even though its in the "%WinDir%\System32\Drivers\Etc". Windows keeps installing the "hosts"-file dating 2019. Every Windows installments probably has the same file/date. It did not look corrupted running the SFC command, but

DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /Restorehealth

 made some corrections. I never got any error message leading here, but i stumbled across this thread, that suddenly made BF2042 launch again, and also BF3 / BF4 not having the invalid licenses anymore.

Probable cause: Not having system updated IP/contact with EA servers. All the games running Javelin Anticheat (e.g. FC25, BF2042, WRC, F1) usually never returned any error messages. Only a few times they said "Could not launch the game due to an error on our part", every other game provided this error:

 

EA_Shepard​   [Resolved] EA app Error Code EC:204

 

  • EA App's Cache (Top Left Menu > Help > App Recovery)
  • EA App - Repair (My Collection > Tile Dots > Repair)
  • Run the System File Checker tool
  • Change UAC Controls within Windows
  • Reset Windows Host File
  • Unplug your modem/router for 5 minutes and attempt to launch again

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