Apologies for unearthing an old thread, but I'm having the exact same issue & error message with punkbuster.

My issues is with BF2142/PB & Windows Blinds.

Adding the BF2142.exe to the Exclusion list as mentioned above hasn't helped.

The Punkbuster people are sayng to disable windows Blinds before running the game, but I can't see how to do this short of uninstalling WB & that is not an option at this point.

The only functional work around I have at the moment is to create another user account without WB & use that to run BF2142, which is a right royal pain in the proverbial. Extra resources are not an issue.

This was not an issue on my XP PC, Punkbuster & WB run side by side beautifully for ages with no problems at all what so ever.

Would any one have any idea as to what I can do about this, apart from the new user account thing? Can WB be temporarily shut down?

open windowblinds configuration and choose default windows look, for XP that would be windows XP theme, for vista choose the vista theme etc, windowblinds will revert back to the normal windows look and then try running the game. once your finished load up the config window again and apply your favourite theme. hope this helps

Thanks people, I will give those suggestions a go & get back to you with how successful I am.

I'm running Vista 64 too, probably should have mentioned that!

WB is fully updated, so is BF2142 & Punkbuster

Zubaz - What does holding down the CTRL key do while starting BF2142?

Aha! Ok, thanks.

Is it essentially doing the same thing as adding that app to the exclusion list or is there a difference?

Regardless I'll give it a go & see what happens.

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Just an update, switching Windows Blinds to Aero works like a charm.

Holding down CTRL when starting the game didn't work for me though.

Thanks for your assistance people!