I have had this problem start up on me spontaneously. I first got Halo and Halo CE soon after I bought my laptop in December. I have Windows 7 and everything ran fine. After about a month of not playing I started playing again and now suddenly I cannot chat, nor does anything whatsoever show up where the chat and You killed SoandSo would show up. I tried the redist download fix so often suggested and still nothing. Any suggestions?