FEAR not starting up (insert curse word of choice here)

[Captain tycho]

Deciding to boot up FEAR for the first time in about a month for some nice multiplayer fragging and bicycle kicking, I downloaded the latest patch using the built-in patching tool. 116mb later, I install without a hitch, and restart FEAR. Hmm, its running in task manager and is taking up CPU cycles, but I can't access it by alt tabbing or anything. No errors appear, either. It just...sits there.

I'm using a full patched version of XP SP2, with the latest audio and Nvidia Forceware drivers (85.95).
EDIT: The game acts the same way even after 2 restarts. Argh.

[Netko]

You should probably post this (if you haven't already) to a FEAR-related board since it sound like the problem is with the game itself instead of a system-wide problem (unless you are having problems with other games/software but aren't mentioning it).

Originaly I was going to suggest that you check out if the codecs needed for the game's videos are ok (haven't played the game for a while but I think it is using windows codecs instead of bink, divx or some other "custom" solution). The solution in that case would probably be to reinstall WMP10. However, those sort of problem these days are usualy smoothly handled by bypassing any videos so the problem is probably present even earlier then that.

Maybe the copy-protection system is acting up (there have been a number of game where it gets upgraded with a patch and suddenly people are having problems)? Have you tried running the game with a no-cd crack?

[Ace Pace]

Wait, you got back into the Task Maneger?

[Captain tycho]

Hmm, it seems the game will work as long as you aren't connected to the internet. Apparently alot of people are having this problem after the 1.2 patch, and no fix has been found yet.

And yeah Ace, I did. Dial-a-fix is a literal miracle worker.