Project Reality Forums

Hi all,

I was using playing ArmA 2 a couple of months ago but uninstalled it (so far as I recall, correctly). Now I'm trying to reinstall it...

ArmA 2 installs fine
Operation Arrowhead installs fine
As soon as it starts trying to automatically patch the game after installing, I get errors like this:


Error found in File ADDONS\Air.pbo ( 00000000 ! = 00000001)
then you have Please be patient. This update may appear to take a long time to complete. It is updating and installing very large data.
ARMA II DVD
ArmA 2: Updating version 1.01 to version 1.05...
Update 1.01-1.02\ADDONS\AIR2.PBO.UPD cannot be applied, error xdelta3 returned error code: 1
Update 1.01-1.02\ADDONS\AIR2.PBO.UPD cannot be applied, error xdelta3 returned error code: 1
Update 1.01-1.02\ADDONS\ANIMALS2.PBO.UPD cannot be applied, error xdelta3 returned error code: 1

(Values & patch numbers not from my install, but from someone else on the internet)

The errors relate to some corruption with \ADDONS\.pbo files, STRUCTURES and AIR2 being the common ones.

Even if I abort the patch and patch manually, multiplayer servers kick me off instantly for modified/corrupt content in my installation.

I've Googled extensively for a result and so far have come up with nothing that's working, having uninstalled/reinstalled A2/OA about 8-9 times yesterday and wasted my day off. Some people suggested removing any BIS/Bohemia/A2/Arma2/OA files via regedit, but even doing that hasn't resolved the problem.

As it stands, I'm of a mind that I can't play it again unless I reformat my PC, and I've too much on here atm to justify reformatting for the sake of one game.

If anyone can offer any advice, it would be appreciated. Thanks.

I recently had exactly the same issue when trying to install a fresh copy of Arma2 on my new PC, no matter what I tried and where I downloaded the files from I kept getting the same errors.

In the end (after 4 days of trying) the only way to get Arma working was to install everything on my media PC (which isn't even powerful enough to play the game), patch it on there and then copy the entire directory over to my gaming pc and it worked.

Like you I spent hours crawling through forum threads to find a solution but it appears you have some hardware on your system which the patch app doesn't like, similar to me. I'm not sure if this solution is any good to you but it worked for me.

This sounds like corrupt installation media / reader / burner to me or even faulty ram stick, or extreme overclock. Which one is you?

I have to admit on my new rig it was overclocked, since my original problems I have actually "under-clocked" my rig to stop BSOD and other issues and have recently patched Take On Helicopters with no issues since under-clocking my rig. It does appear that my RAM was overheating and couldn't keep up with my 4.2GHz CPU.

Everything else on my PC works fine, and I recently cleaned the inside of my PC and the components.

I was playing ArmA 2 two months ago, but uninstalled it, and it seems it's caused a registry issue somewhere.

My hardware is fine, and my PC isn't overclocked.

Thanks for the installing and transferring idea BabylonCome, I might just give that a try!

Errors you posted in OP have nothing to do with registry errors. Those are corrupt files as I can see it. So for the sake of stability check your HDD, RAM, and cleanup your PC ( scan for filesystem corruption, scan for malware, cleanup clutter and registry and defragment ).

If none of these is problem then you might have faulty DVD install disk or faulty DVD reader/burner. Easy to check with method BCome pointed to. Use same disk and install o different PC. If it installs fine then your burner is faulty if not then its disk.

Since this is Arma2 general problem and not PR I will have to move it to software & OS, as instructed by red tags.