Anyone having problems with BF1942 dumping back to the Windows desktop just as the splash screen is loading can change their VideoDefault.con file and change the following line: renderer.allowAllRefreshRates 1 (from the default of 0). All worked well until I applied the 1.2 patch and this started happening to me. Making this change fixed the problem. Evidently, they messed around with the refresh rates in this patch and it might lead to some problems on XP systems.