Call of Cuty Modern Warfare 2 Multiplayer freezing on launch

So I had to fix a friends laptop that wasn’t running Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 for PC properly. The symptoms were:

• Single Player works correctly
• Using Steam
• Multiplayer lanuches and shows the splash screen then the screen goes black and then nothing…  the game then  hangs and forcing you  to press ctrl alt del to start the Windows Task Manager and end the no longer responding iw4mp.exe.
• So you start Multiplayer again and get the option for play in safe mode prompt, which either answer brings you back to your original issue. Mulitplayer still doesnt work.

After seaching the internet for couple of hours I soon found the solution that worked for me.


1) In Steam, select “Backup game files” for Modern Warfare 2 and Modern Warfare 2 Multiplayer, (select both titles in the backup list). 

2) Then select “Delete local content” for both single player and multi player.

3) Next, locate your Steam common folder, eg; C:Program FilesSteamsteamappscommon. There should be a folder called “Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2” . Either Delete this folder OR move (not copy) it to another location for backup reasons.

4) Navigate to the location of your recent backup of the game and run the restore program. e.g. C:backupCall of Duty Modern Warfare 2Disk 1Restore.exe. Once it has completely restored, open Steam and run updates.


5) Once everything is 100% run multiplayer and it should run without error.

If you have any further issues with this procedure or your own additions please leave a comment or email me.