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  1. Games
  2. FPS Games
  3. Call of Duty
  4. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

Get Call of Duty to play better and faster

Features
By PC Gamer Staff published 6 March 2008

Or in the superlative, play fastest

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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 theInfinity Wardforums, or thefansite.

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PC Gamer is the global authority on PC games and has been covering PC gaming for more than 20 years. The site continue that legacy today with worldwide print editions and around-the-clock news, features, esports coverage, hardware testing, and game reviews on pcgamer.com, as well as the annual PC Gaming Show at E3.  

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