My magical CTD advice, If you get crashes, lookie here.

You just downloaded the nawmod. You say, "dis iz gonna be da coolest mod of all time!" You get in your chair, go to the SP menu, click the map, and hit SP, almost ready to faint. You're loading, saying to yourself, "Time to kick some butt!" when all the sudden the music starts looping, and you get the fatal CTD.

who would have thought 5 years after battlefield 2 was released ppl still need to run bf2
on anything but max settings.

however if you pc is lacking in a great grafix card you must set textures to medium everything else can be on low settings.

Now, don't be paralyzed. There are two main ways to track down what gave you this... thing.

1. Running in windowed mode

EA/DICE made something good, and that is windowed mode. To simply run the game windowed, right click the shortcut, click properties, and see that target box? Copy and paste this to replace whats in the target box.

"C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\Battlefield 2\BF2.exe" +fullscreen 0

Now you'd replace the C:\Program Files\etc. with the directory that you installed BF2 in. To use a different mod, just add this on the end:

+modPath mods/naw

Run the game now, and it will be windowed. If not, add this on the end.

+szx 800 +szy 600

example "C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\Battlefield 2\BF2.exe" +menu 1 +fullscreen 0 +modPath mods/naw

Now, play as you normally would. Once you get to the part that CTD'd last time, it may pop up an error message, telling you what's wrong. No matter what button you hit, it exits out of the game.

No error message? Then we turn to our last resort.

2. The BF2 debugger

This thing... is the most painful thing to come to the world. It is honestly usually my last resort, if the above didn't work. To get ahold of the debugger, you need to install the editor, which can be found here. Run the included BF2_r in windowed mode. Now, bunker down for the masses upon masses of error messages. Simply click continue on all of them. Just don't try doing anything else, even if it seems it will never go away, because after, hmm 30 minutes it will. Once you fight your way to the loading screen more error messages will come, so continue hitting continue. Make sure to pay attention to where it CTD'd last time. Once you get to where it does its infamous CTD, it will pop up an error message. Pay special attention to this message. It will tell you what's wrong! Take a picture and post it somewhere where you can get help. At this point, you can hit cancel, as it probably won't continue.

Making a proper shortcut

This is an example of what not to put as our shortcut:

C:\Program files\EA GAMES\Battlefield 2\mods\naw

This is what it should be:

"C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\Battlefield 2\BF2.exe" +modPath mods/naw +szx 800 +szy 600

Some known causes of CTD's and solutions (please expand):

* Missing a navmesh - you'll have to make one for yourself. See this to learn how.
* Crashes on 14-15% - most likely (not all the time) because of islands in a navmesh. You'll have to fix it in 3ds max/Maya. See above link to learn how.
* CTD on custom maps - increase your graphics to at least medium (thanks FFOLKES)
* If neither the debugger or windowed mode work - it is associated with your graphics (thanks FFOLKES)
* It seems that the game hardcodes certain characters to be used with certain installations. This is unconfirmed, but this may be the situation (confirmation needed).

This list will be expanded in the future. See this for more problems and solutions.

Hopefully that answers what to do if you get CTD. Cheers