The move away from CoD’s WWII origins was met with much scepticism. Happily, fears proved unfounded, and the developers’ efforts were rewarded with the best-selling game this Christmas, shifting half a million copies in December alone on various formats. Still, no one’s perfect, and the devs should probably stay in their military issue flak jackets while we ponder some of the more common technical issues you’ve had with the game.

CoD4 says it can’t find a file to start playing
Some people have reported that after installing the game - and patching it to version 1.3 - they’ve been hit with this message when they try to start playing: “ERROR: Could not find zone ‘C:\WINDOWS\zone\english\code_post_gfx.ff’.” If re-installing the game doesn’t help, there is a workaround: simply locate the folder ‘Call of Duty 4 - Modern Warfare’ in the installation directory and copy the entire folder called ‘zone’ from there to C:\Windows.
 
There’s a problem with iw3mp.exe - it says it needs to close
You may find that there’s a problem with iw3sp.exe, too. More often than not, this is an issue with the audio engine, 32-bit processors or older and integrated soundcards. Try fiddling with the sound settings - some people have found that just plugging in a microphone works. If you’re running an older Athlon processor, try renaming ‘mssmp3.asi’ to ‘mssmp3.bak’ (you’ll find it in the ‘...\miles’ folder).

Every time I try to change resolution, CoD4 just crashes 
Are you running XFire, perchance? Despite being a great tool for in-game chatting and server browsing, it has a known conflict with CoD4.

All I can see are white blobs on a black background 
Don’t worry - you haven’t been hit by a hippy flashbang. Chances are you’re running an nVidia card and have the drivers set to ‘Override any application setting’. Try changing this to ‘Off’ or ‘Enhance the application setting’ and the world should come swimming back into focus and colour.

When I use the iron sights on my rifle, everything goes blurry
Hopefully this will be fixed in the next patch. For now, just turn off Depth of Field.

Where’s the best place to go for more help?
Try the Infinity Ward forums, or the fansite.

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