Quake 3 help needed

Ok, I recently replaced my motherboard with a far better working one.

I had to reload the system..... reloading all the games.


Quake 3 is torquing me off.

I legitimately bought the game when it first came out. (Let's get that established)

I installed and added all the latest patches.


This morning I connected to a deathmatch server without a problem this morning.

This afternoon the wife could not connect to any server.... they all said "Invalid CD key". :confused: :confused: :confused:

I connected to another that once I died, it kept me in spectator mode saying Punkbuster needed updated.

I go to Punkbuster's site. I download the latest file.
It still does the same darn thing!! :knife:

Unfortunately the wife still digs Quake 3. If it was up to me, I would snap the CD in two!!

It shouldn't be this freaking difficult to get a stinking game going.

Any help would be appreciated.

I PM'd you..Please check your mail box:D

This is a common problem; it's not just you.

The first thing you need to do is go through ALL subdirectories of your Q3A directory and nuke any file named "Q3KEY" except for the one in the baseq3 directory. This is the only folder where it needs to be. Open the file and make sure it matches your CDKey exactly.

What fixed the problem for me was to put the following entry in my Windows Hosts file:

192.246.40.56 authorize.quake3arena.com

This page has some good info on the problem: http://www.planetquake.com/features/...001111_a.shtml (this is where I got the authorize.quake3arena.com trick)

Also, v1.31 servers seem to be immune to this problem. You can easily switch between v1.31 and 1.32 by downloading this: http://ofxclan.com/modules.php?name=...p=getit&lid=20

Click on the link below and download pbweb.exe, save it in the root PB directory in Quake and then execute.

http://www.evenbalance.com/index.php?page=updatepb.php