The first problem sounds like a graphics card. I had to get a 9600 GT OS and set it to -novsync just to get Halo 2 to run right on mine.
As for invalid product key that seems to be going around a lot. Happened to my dedicated server as well. I think someone might be using a key gen to pass around codes that already exist and thus they are becoming inoperational one by one.
Of course bungie doesn't do anything about it since it just means more copies of H2V off the shelves for them.
Needless to say these kids are probably just as immature as those going around DDosing servers.
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