Bad serial number given in setup and ARMA II OA problems

[Oslo1998 0]

Ok guys, so here is the problem. I recently bought ARMA II Combined Ops(to play DayZ, indeed) but when I try to join a server with Six Launcher, a window pop-up saying this : Bad serial number given in setup. I know a lot of threads already have been poster on this subject but no one fixed my problem yet. I've seen people saying to run STEAM as administrator, I tried but nothing changed. I tried to open ARMA II and ARMA II OA but when I open OA, another window apears, then disapear. A few seconds later, the game open, but close immediatly. After that, another window comes, saying something about shadows.

Please, anyone, help me, I don't get money easily and I don't wan't to waste the money I invested in this game.

Thank you all

[bond1971@tpg.com.au 92]

Hi Oslo, I have already answered this in another thread and there could be others trying to help out there as well so I would suggest looking through the forums for possible fixes to this. I recently purchased a few copies of this for the kids so I had a lot of fun installing it, configuring it and then finding servers that matched the beta versions etc so I am nearly a pro now.

www.dayzwiki.com is a great resource and has a section devoted to installing Dayz.

What you need to do when first buying the game is -

1. Run ARMA2 at least once. When you get to the menu screen you can exit out.

2. Run ARMA2 OA at least once. When you get to the menu screen you can exit out.

3. (I install mine manually but I will show you how to do this via Six-Launcher). Download and install 6-launcher. It will download 16 meg when you first run it, takes forever to get it down so be patient.

4. Exit out of Six-launcher and relaunch it.

5. Exit out of Six-launcher and relaunch it (No, its not a duplicate bug, the launcher is buggy as all hell). Basically keep exiting out and relaunching until it DOES NOT download 16 meg.

6. You need to go into the six-launcher options, located at the bottom. Check the boxes you want, but make sure you check update beta box. And dont bother trying to run through steam (I do at home but like I said I install it manually).

7. Six launcher takes too long starting arma2 so you will not get a spot on a server UNLESS you pick a server and when it says server full or nearly full then choose join anyway. You can then change servers anyway.

8. When you start up the game, go to options, video options, disable post processing effects, match display resolution with 3d display resolution (both need to be the same), turn off v-sync, change video memory to default (unless you have a low video card then max it).

9. Prepare to be PVP'd to death.

There are also some good threads on how to optimise ARMA2 and these work well if your machine struggles with FPS.

Hope this helps.

[Oslo1998 0]

Yes but the thing is that when I run Six Launcher, the first thing that appears is the DayZ Menu, I cannot choose to run any ARMA II on it. ( I'm sorry if I just said something stupid, I'm not an expert in term of computer)

[juice_96 3]

My friend is experiencing the same problem and has jumped through every hoop with 0 success. When he validates the files on Steam, it's continually finding 1-11 files that are missing and re-downloads them and STILL having the same problem. So, the real question here...is Steam causing this problem?