OK, I have been tearing my hair out for a week now and still could not get online. I am posting in case this helps someone else. There are many problems, this was mine. I am skipping all the other stuff I tried that didn't work because otherwise this would be 100 pages long. (People who bought the digital download not the disc, read through, a guy posted a fix later in the thread, starsee post from Hugh Jazznuts on page 5)

1) My story: I bought the disc retail, special edition at walmart. I installed it, selecting the option to run without the disc in. When the installation finished, it closed, there was no message of completion. There were no icons placed on my desktop. Ran the installation repair utility 2x, still no icons on desktop. I created shortcuts to both the updater and the game and placed them on my desktop. Off I went to play the game.... or so I thought.

2) My symptoms: The game starts fine, from the updater or the game shortcuts. I login in with my account. I am online in some capacity. I can send and recieve friend requests, I can access the leaderboards and stats. I can see my friends online, and even see what server they are on, the map, the player count... But when I try to join them, it says "cannot connect to eaonline". I pull up the server browser, and it spins the wheel endlessly, then stops... no error message, and no servers showing. When I try to "play now", wheel spins, then "no games found please try again". Thus began my journey... Fast forward to 7 days later, when I finally got online...

3) What finally worked: First off, let me say that I tried this many many times, alone and in combination with other things, and finally today, it just.... worked. Make sure you have done all the other stuff... port forwarding, update video drivers etc... Also, first try locating and running the updater by right clicking and selecting the option to run as admin... you may not have to go thru all this. If you don't get a large download, it didn't work, keep reading.
OK, I uninstalled the game, using the uninstall programs portion of the windows control panel.
Next, open the file file explorer, then locate and delete the folder in programfiles, EA. For instance, in Vista64, the path is C:\ProgramFiles(x86)\ElectronicArts\BattlefieldBadCompany2
Otherwise this won't work.
If you own multiple EA game titles, delete the BFBC2 file folder instead, but you have got to get that file out of there. Otherwise it saves a few small files that will sabatoge you.
Restart your computer, making sure not to leave the disc in the drive.

Now, make sure you have disabled AnyDVD, if you have this program installed. Also, go into your control panel and disable windows firewall completely. If you have any other firewall sofware, disable that as well. Komodo firewall users have to perform additional disabling, see the UK forums for more info on that.

Next, begin a clean install from the disc, right clicking the autorun and selecting the "run as administrator" option. When prompted, enter your key. When prompted, select the installation option so you need the disc in the slot to run the game. After the installation completes, you should be prompted to run the game now. Do it.

*** If this is successful, you will get a large download of the latest update. Following this, you should be able to access online multiplay ******* Now you can experience all the ctd's and pnkbuster discos you're friends have been talking about! You may also now reenable windows firewall.

You see, it's not the server capacity, it's the client side software, specifically, the updater. The only way to update is using the updater. If the updater EA Fails, ther'es nothing you can do. You can't dl the updates from a link somewhere and install them yourself (weak sauce!). Since there has been so many server side updates, the updater can't synch up or something, so connecting during a fresh install is the only way to grab the updates you need in order to be able to grab the updates you need.

I know there are others with different troubles, but I really hope this helps somebody somewhere. EA devs, fix the gosh darned updating software you incompetent *! No reason I should have had to spend 12 hours of my liesure time troubleshooting your product that I had to pay you for. As far as your server capacity issues, you were either negligent or incompetent, niether of which speaks well of you. I hope you all get fired.

Sincerely,
The Demon Slick

*** Update:3/29/10
I actually just started getting punkbuster disconnects on Friday night 3/26/10. It was really wierd too, because I had a heck of a time getting it to run online at first, but since I started getting updates it's been no troubles found FTW. I did a complete uninstall/reinstall, pain in the rear, and got an update I wasn't getting before (WTF?).
I went to the file on the disc for punkbuster (it's red and blue) and right clicked it then selected the update option from the list. Igot a dl, accept, yada yada. I then went back into the game, and the same punkbuster heartbeat 0.0 seconds error kept occuring, and and I was getting kicked. Could not play a complete game, was frustrating as all gosh darned. For the heck of it, I restarted my PC, and it ran fine...(WTF?) . It hasn't happened so far for a couple of nights now, can finish games, all is well again.

and it takes that much to explain how you fixed it?

ps3.rockmanCronik2 wrote:and it takes that much to explain how you fixed it?

I'm glad he posted exactly what issues and such that he had, because now I'm going to try this because I was having the exact same issues.
No one asked you to read it if it wasn't helpful to you.

Bump for people to find it

Where is yhis updating he is talking about? I've never even seen a EA Updater and nothing about updates on the client side anywhere in the forums...?

battlefield.McHoogey wrote:Where is yhis updating he is talking about? I've never even seen a EA Updater and nothing about updates on the client side anywhere in the forums...?

In the folder where BC2 is installed.

cem_ea_id.blackop_2 wrote:

battlefield.McHoogey wrote:Where is yhis updating he is talking about? I've never even seen a EA Updater and nothing about updates on the client side anywhere in the forums...?

In the folder where BC2 is installed.

In your "mydocs" folder you'll see the BFBC2 folder, look for the "BFBC2 updater". What I did was copied that updater .exe shortcut to my desktop and run that in admin mode when I go to load up the game, that way I'll always know when the next patch comes out.

cem_ea_id.blackop_2 wrote:

battlefield.McHoogey wrote:Where is yhis updating he is talking about? I've never even seen a EA Updater and nothing about updates on the client side anywhere in the forums...?

In the folder where BC2 is installed.

So it is run whenever I start BC2 seamlessly?

I installed the game twice, on my Old hard drive and new one...and both times right after i finished installing and tried loading up the game it had me Install that updater patcher that took like 30 mins. I have no clue why for some people it doesnt show up.

As I've already redeemed my limited edition code, does it mean that if I uninstall it and reinstall it I won't be able to use my code again???

Thanks Demon, I'm going to give it a shot.

bump

so i have to Reinstall the game ? :S wtfffff... xD

never had problems with games... this is the worst buggy crap iv ever seen :S

I am with Demon on this 1. I have a personal friend that works for EA and they couldn't even help me. They obviously got in too big of a rush to get the game out and didn't get things working correctly. my friend who will remain nameless assures me that they are working on it and will get the game running to its full potential soon.

As for Demon, I have to say thank you for spending the time to make your post and helping the rest of us with the same problem out.

Bump