Fix Battlefield 3 activation issue (Origin)

I’ve recently bought Battlefield 3 and had rather unpleasant opportunity of playing with Origin. Maybe it’s because I’ve bought my copy from third party, not directly from EA, but I’ve had problems with activation. And not only with that. After installation game didn’t want to run at all. But a restart of OS helped here. When I’ve finally launched the game I’ve received such message.

Unfortunately Enter Product Key gave me nothing, so I’ve spent more than an hour searching Internet for solution. Without results. But one of proposed solutions gave me idea, so here is how I’ve solved it:

1. Close Origin if it’s running.
2. Block Origin from connecting to Internet, you can do it in Windows Firewall with advanced settings (you must block both incoming and outgoing connection). Here is good tutorial on that.
3. Launch the game via bf3.exe.
4. You’ll see message that you can activate the game using your EA account (create one if you don’t have it), log in.
5. After activation you’ll be able to play, but only in single player mode. So unblock Origin in firewall and launch the game through it.

It worked like a charm, but I was close to giving up. Game is great, so it was worth to fight for it though. Enjoy!

But I must say that the thing that user who is buying legitimate copy of a game, not downloading illegal one, must go through all these troubles pretty sucks.