<blockquote><hr>
Hrmm. I had no problem updating TC3 and logged right in. I don't patch back and forth. I have one game installation for TC3 and another separate installation for EA-land. Logging in with client will never get you an update patch. Must login with just TSO.exe. You might try rebooting computer to make sure buddy.exe has been released by windows, so that when you login with patch you are getting a clean game launch.
[/ QUOTE ]
I patched just fine, updater up date of 578.2kb and TC3 update of 8.4mb, everything worked fine until I got the latest patch. I always log in with the patch (aka tso.exe) first, since its the only one that will allow me to choose from my three AVs (the client greys out the other two). Rebooting didn't help. I always reboot after in unistall something and then again after installing something. Windows had an update today (Group Policy Preference Client Side Extensions for Windows Vista [KB943729]) so maybe that's conflicting with the TC3 update? Can't see how though.
Since I've made my other post, I tried working with my firewall (McAfee) to see if maybe the problem was with that. I turned it off completely, the game went to the acct password screen, loaded to 100% then froze just like before with the error that its stopped working. Set my firewall to not launch at startup and rebooted to try again, again the same thing happened. This is with BOTH the tso.exe AND the client. Maybe a solution will come up later.