Flashing sun flare and long start up

[The_Turkish_Moose]

Issue #1: Long start up
I've put off posting about this issue for about year but seeing as I have two issues now, I thought I'd give it a mention. When I launch BF2, any BF2 Mod (including RP) or even BF2142, I have to wait about 10-20 seconds until the program starts to respond. I launch the game and open up task manager and can see that it says "Not responding". It never used to take this long to load - it used to take maybe 5 seconds or less. Unfortunately, I can't remember the exact moment when this problem occured but it would of been about a year ago. I've searched the internet high and low for a solution and found nothing. I've completely uninstalled BF2 and BF2142 including all the mods, reinstalled them and achieved nothing. Tried using compatibility settings and still nothing. Where should I be looking? What did I f**k up?

Issue #2: Flashing sun flare
Now this bug just happened, and again, it's a rare occurrence like the long start up. This bug appears in BF2, all mods and even BF2142. If I look directly at the sun, the flare doesn't flash. When I go behind an object and the sun goes out of view, the flare flickers every second for a frame or two. I never had this issue and cannot find anyone else who is having this issue. The issue occurred once I accidentaly launched BF2_r. An error popped up saying "you don't have directx 9.0c installed" which I do. Not bothered about using the BF2_r.exe anyway but now I've got this new bug. Maybe this exe thing isn't even related.

Please, if any geniuses out there can help me get my game running as it should be with quicker start ups and no flashing sun flares, it would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks for reading this far

MY SPEC:
Windows 10
64 bit
i7 3630qm @ 2.4ghz
GT 650M
16GB RAM

[The_Turkish_Moose]

Issue #2: SOLVED
I had a new issue with my mouse where it wouldn't move in game. I found a tip in another forum that resetting the controls to default fixes the issue. It did and I thought I try setting the video settings to default too to see if it would fix the bug I'm getting. It worked perfectly so that issues solved!

I'm still having the long delay at the beginning though. I've tried to figure out why it spends the first 20 seconds not responding. Some more information is that when first launched the screen slowly flickers 4 times between two shades of black. One where the screen has no back light and the other with back light but still black as if it's turning my display on and off.

Still waiting for help!

[DC_K]

do you have an anti virus? what is it? do you have pr whitelisted?

[The_Turkish_Moose]

I use ESET Smart Security
I'll try tampering with the settings to see if it works and let you know the results. Never thought the issue would be there though!

[DC_K]

i would disable it for a moment and run PR, see if it still takes longer than it should to load. I suspect its the AV scanning everything that loads

[The_Turkish_Moose]

i would disable it for a moment and run PR, see if it still takes longer than it should to load. I suspect its the AV scanning everything that loads

DC_K, you're a genius! The game loaded in under 5 seconds. You're the man! So in my anit-virus, I tried to make an exception for the .exe and then the entire BF2 folder but it made no difference. Does this mean I'll have to disable my anti virus every time I want a quick launch or is there a permanent fix or setting in my anti virus. I tried different things and searched online but drew a blank