Toolbox issues. "fh2_toolbox.exe is not a valid Win32 application."

[Ionizer]

Okay, I have a problem.  I recently needed to reinstall BF2 and FH2 to fix something.  All fine and dandy, nothing went wrong, everything works fine.  I can play both BF2 and FH2 perfectly fine.  Except one thing.  Just a few weeks before I needed to reinstall, I finally got my FH2 Toolbox working.  I basically needed to close an error message that popped up before the "Updates and Notices" window of Toolbox opened and locked the whole thing up.  Well, I did that, then updated the FH2 Toolbox through it's update window (which I had neglected to do on my last reinstall in January).  And the toolbox finally worked. 

Until I reinstalled a few days ago.  After I reinstalled, I opened up the Toolbox, expecting to have to race an error message and then update the toolbox for it to work.  I was surprised when it worked fine off the bat with no error message, the Updates and Notices window popped up and nothing locked up or anything.  I deleted the "New" notices (that I read before on previous installs) and clicked for it to install the filter update.  Well, it installed and closed the program, and when I tried to open it again, I got an error message.  The message said: "C:\Program Files\EA Games\Battlefield 2\mods\fh2\binaries\fh2_toolbox\fh2_toolbox.exe is not a valid Win32 application."  The toolbox window doesn't open up, this error message just pops up with the option to click "OK," which closes the error message.

I'd like to use the Ping Compensation feature of the Toolbox, as well as check which servers are populated and who is playing on which server.  But if it's broken like this, I can't.  Which sucks.

Can someone (I guess Purity?) help me out here?  I'd love to play on hsLAN without feeling the effects of 120 ping.  (As an aside, I'd love to know just how the ping compensation thing works and why it isn't standard on all online games.)

[[130.Pz]S.Lainer]

I'd like to use the Ping Compensation feature of the Toolbox, as well as check which servers are populated and who is playing on which server.  But if it's broken like this, I can't.  Which sucks.

Can someone (I guess Purity?) help me out here?  I'd love to play on hsLAN without feeling the effects of 120 ping.  (As an aside, I'd love to know just how the ping compensation thing works and why it isn't standard on all online games.)

Welcome to my world Ionizer.  I never cared about the toolbox until it mysteriously worked for a couple months.  Now I am like a crack addict without his fix.  WORK DAMN YOU WORK!

Ohh and BTW a big round of applause to Purity who worked with me for like 4 hours straight late into the night trying to get the thing working for me.  We never got it to live again but I very much appreciated the effort.

[sheikyerbouti]

 I kind of had this problem too, but personally, I can live without the lag compensator. The toolbox nowadays is fine for displaying server population but I haven't been able to use it to connect to a game for months.
 
 I live like 3 000+ Kilometres from you guys and I can live with the ping on HSlan, so you whiners in New Jersey and Maine should just suck it up.


 The solution to this problem is for all of us high-pingers to stop resorting to HSlan and other European servers when we have capable servers that are much closer to all of us on this side of the pond.

 Instead of just WOLF Thursday, it should be WOLF (or 101, or 130clan, or WaW) server everyday for us. Atm things are ok as WaW has a COOP server happening with a decent amount of players but us high pingers need to throw up some resistance and stop taking the easy route to a very high ping on some distant server in a 'European galaxy, far, far away'.

 We need a greater effort towards building and maintaining some sort of schedule on NA servers that allow us to play well and put up a reasonable fight. We used to have no problem keeping at least one North American server going but what circumstances changed in order to cause us to (essentially) only play on HSlan?

[[130.Pz]S.Lainer]

I live like 3 000+ Kilometres from you guys and I can live with the ping on HSlan, so you whiners in New Jersey and Maine should just suck it up.

I do find that ping does not matter as much on FH2 as it does on FH1.  However as I have gotten a little better at the game I do see myself rage quieting off euro servers when I am doing worse then I usually do.  Sad really.  It used to be all about the game but I am getting a wee bit competitive as of late.  That being said there was other features to the toolbox that I loved beyond that.  The biggest being the browser itself.  When that toolbox was working I played all the time.  I would just keep it running all day and if I wandered into my den after a smoke to check e-mail or whatever I would hit the refresh button and see a small game going on and join.  Now I just load up FH2 if I really am feeling in a hardcore FH mood.

[NTH]

The only tip I can give you, Ionizer, is that the FH2 toolbox makes lots of entries into the windows registry.
I found this out after I mistakenly erased my BF2 Serial from the registry (Don't ask 

Maybe deinstalling BF2 plus FH2 and then purging every entry from the registry will solve your problem, though it seems a lot of effort.

Perhaps there is a way to install the Toolbox stand-alone. You would have to look into the FH2.rar files to see if this is possible..

[Ionizer]

I don't like messing with registry stuff.

Let's just hope Purity shows up and leads us to Toolbox Nirvana.

[Ionizer]

I'm gonna bump this on the off chance that someone who can help me will see it.

[Ekalbs]

Umm ionizer try my fix! its a few threads down called toolbox fixed!

[Torenico]

What? whit Toolbox open, you get less lag?

[[130.Pz]S.Lainer]

What? whit Toolbox open, you get less lag?

Where do you live?

[DLFReporter]

What? whit Toolbox open, you get less lag?

You don't get less lag, but it has a built in lag compensation (which just has to be activated), which helps in high ping situations.

[Ionizer]

Umm ionizer try my fix! its a few threads down called toolbox fixed!

I have XP.  I thought your thing only worked for Vista.

[Ekalbs]

well that just it when i posted that i had no idea that xp could run the toolbox but the problems that occur are the same and i do not have xp so i cant test but it may just come down to ram usage.

[NTH]

Umm ionizer try my fix! its a few threads down called toolbox fixed!

I have XP.  I thought your thing only worked for Vista.

Have you tried starting the toolbox from the it's original path, not using the shortcut ?
You could also try this:

Go to Start ->Run.
Type in "C:\Program Files (x86)\EA GAMES\Battlefield 2\mods\fh2\binaries\fh2_toolbox.exe" /REGSERVER

Your path probably look different then mine. You need to use the quotation signs!
You may not get a message that it is registered. And sometime you have to register some .dll or .ocx files too.

Let me know if it works.

[Ionizer]

Umm ionizer try my fix! its a few threads down called toolbox fixed!

I have XP.  I thought your thing only worked for Vista.

Have you tried starting the toolbox from the it's original path, not using the shortcut ?
You could also try this:

Go to Start ->Run.
Type in "C:\Program Files (x86)\EA GAMES\Battlefield 2\mods\fh2\binaries\fh2_toolbox.exe" /REGSERVER

Your path probably look different then mine. You need to use the quotation signs!
You may not get a message that it is registered. And sometime you have to register some .dll or .ocx files too.

Let me know if it works.

I just tried both of those methods, and I get the same error message as before: "...not a valid Win32 application."

This is so frustrating...  But at least it doesn't actually prevent me from playing.  And 120 ping isn't that bad, it just takes some getting used to when you usually work with 15 ping.