After trying repeatedly to get Battlefield 1942 to work on my computer, I broke down and searched the EA Customer Support page. My symptoms and "so-called" solution are shown if ya just hit Read More.

PROBLEM:

After showing a full black screen the game crashes back to the Windows desktop and an error Beep is heard. The computer is using Windows XP.

SOLUTION:
This indicates a trouble with the refresh rate of the game. Some users may have a program installed that forces a higher refresh rate than 60 Hz (e.g. Refresh Force) if so make sure that his is closed down before running the game..

Next set the Windows refresh rate to 60 Hz:

Right click on your Desktop and Select "Properties". Then click the "Settings" tab. Click the "Advanced..." button. Then go to the "Monitor" tab. In the drop down box below where it Says "Monitor Settings", change that box to 60 Hz and try running the game again. This should solve your issue.
Also, Make sure that you have closed any programs or tasks running in the background as sometimes one of the programs can conflict with the game. Background applications such as anti-virus programs are often the cause of conflicts.

Hold down the Ctrl, Atl, and Delete keys at the same time
This will bring up the "Task Manager", follow the steps bellow in order:

1) Click the "Processes"
2) Click on the User Name button to sort by user name
3) Click on anything besides EXPLORER and TASKMGR for this User Name or other user names. Do NOT select anything for SYSTEM, LOCAL SERVICE, or NETWORK SERVICE.
4) Click on END PROCESS
5) Repeat steps 3 and 4 until only explorer.exe and taskmgr.exe are open for this user profile


What's the minimum for refresh rate to prevent headaches again? 70 for any viewing over an hour? Kind of makes ya wonder if EA and Microsoft are in cahoots. Trying to avoid lawsuits concerning overexposure and posture related complaints by tainting the milk, I think. At any rate, 40+ dollars for an unplayable game is bound to raise questions. Well, except for you aspirin addicts out there.

AFAIK 75hz was set a while ago as the recommended minimum by some saftey standards group.

MS are trying to send us all blind to hide how damn ugly the Luna theme is.

from the patch (1.1) dox:

Fixed refresh rate locked to 60 hz in Win2k and XP machines. We're working on getting this fix for Win98 and ME machines. To enable this on Win2k and XP machines do the following:
Open the videodefault.con file found in Settings\VideoDefault.con
Edit the line: renderer.allowAllRefreshRates # (where # can be replaced by 0 or 1)
Changing this value to one will allow you to select the refresh rates from the Options>Video section of the in-game frontend. NOTE: the game will default to 640x480.

He's right you gotta know what refresh rate you are running at and match it with the one in BF. That's what I did and it worked fine.

You can also try the 1.2 patch.
http://www.battlefield1942.com

this is a prob I had first time i played BF1942.
The fix i came up with was to goto the BF1942 dir
D:\BattleField1942\Mods\bf1942\Settings
open VideoDefault.con and change allow ALL refreshrates to 1.
And when u restart BF1942 it should use the correct refresh rate.
EA tech support totaly sux, I wish that company would go under but they won't, to many noobs keep buying NFS and those other crappy EA sports games, that EA makes most of its money from.

You got it wrong, EA didn't make this game, DICE did.

It don't matter, Who published it??? who is responsible for tech support? eh? EA.

I still think EA is good. They make without a doubt the best sports games, and always have, and im not alone thinking that.

BTW. 1.3 patch has been released for this game.

Fifa 2003 tbh