FA gets stuck on the connection screen

[Freedomfighter]

This is an issue that has been in FAF for years and many players have this problem.
When you try to connect to a game, the connection screen never loads and you just get stuck there, you think ok and go to press the abort connection button. And it doesn't work no matter how much you press it.
So you think I know I'll just alt-tab, you're back to your desktop but you realise that your mouse pointer is still FA's mouse pointer and you cannot click on anything but the task bar and the only think you can click on the task bar is the FA window.
So you try right click and close, doesn't close.
so you open task manager, but you cannot click on task manager to close anything.

The error FA gives you when this happens,

Failed to setup initial search path
Program: C:\ProgramData\FAForever\bin\ForgedAlliance.exe
Cmd line arguments:
callstack:
unknown symbol (address 0x008cef50)

Last 100 lines of log...
warning:Running "C:\ProgramData\FAForever\bin\SupComDataPath.lau" failed:
cannot read init_faf.lau: No such file or directory stack traceback
[C]: in function 'dofile'
C:\programData\FAForever\bin\SupComDataPath.lau(2): in main chunk

had to write this all out by hand as I couldn't click anything to copy paste it

[SpdyGonzalez]

well, if you so a search on the Tech support forum for that error "address 0x008cef50" you will see that many different things can cause that, but, most of them are solved, so, first, to avoid the issue of canceled downloads or updates, clean your faf instalation, check this guide :

http://forums.faforever.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=11701&p=119622

after that, if you have a firewall or internet security suite, or antivirus, setup them so that you download porperly all the stuff without errors, then set up properly your connection by accessing router and port forwarding udp port 6112

have fun

[Freedomfighter]

So after a fresh installation of FAF, deleting everything including map and mod folders and an IP address reset it seems to have fixed it. I cannot say if it is a total fix or just temporary.

[SpdyGonzalez]

if it the problem does not come back, please mark this topic as solved by accepting an answer