...for further details of what everything does, what vehicles, weapons and maps are available within First Strike etc.

. Within 5 seconds of spawning in my very first game, I got teamkilled
I must have sacred the guy, he kept apologizing.

Arrgh! Another player!
The shock to his system must have been tremendous...

If you don't mind I'l give you a quick run down of what the kits do.

Number 8 is always a droid- a deployable robot who will usually follow you.
Ordinarily you need three players in a squad to deploy droids but some server settings allow you to use droids and simlar items without being in a squad.
What the droid does is class specific- usually augmenting your ability to teamwork.
Trooper gets a short range sensor droid (like a UAV) that compliments his deployable sensors (7, IIRC)
Medic gets a healing drone to compliment his bacta canisters(4) and shock paddles (5)
Support gets an R series droid that works like an ammo crate, complimenting his actual ammo generator (4)
Heavy Veapons Guy gets a blaster remote that follows you and shoots things (Rebel) or a patrol torture droid that stays in an area and floats towards enemies nearby- damaging them if it gets close -also damaging friendlies!(Imperial)

Officer kit gets a spawn beacon instead that requires 4 squad members to use. You must be a squad leader to use officer kit.

Other than that the most important knowledge is GRENADES. Only the trooper gets frag grenades and they are weapon (4). Anything else that looks like a grenade is NOT a frag grenade.

Medic gets area of effect sonic or gas grenades that do the same thing- do damage over a few seconds in a large area of effect. These force the enemy to run away from the damage zone or die. Note that you wont get credit for kills with this weapon...

Heavy gets two emp grenades (6) that screw up vehicles and annoy walkers. Not an incredible weapon, not nearly as effective as 2142 , more of a last resort.

Support is carrying enough firepower to destroy a Star Destroyer. This is because he is carrying explosives and the means to infinitely resupply those explosives (ammo generator)

Explosive time bombs are (6) and you carry 2 that can be resupplied . These explode after a few seconds and stick to walls and vehicles, meaning they are great for chucking at tanks and walkers.
They do not throw far though meaning you have to be danger close to use them.
You have to be careful with them- I'd say 90% of new guy TK's are due to thinking that these are normal grenades or mines.

Confusingly, you also carry 2 proximity mines(7) shaped like triangles. They stick to walls but not vehicles. They explode from the face so if you deploy them on the ground they explode upwards and out, if stuck to a wall they explode perpendicualr to the wall and out.
They don't resupply so use them carefully.

Thats the important stuff. Every other weapon/equipment is safe enough to find out what it is by using it.

In particular , try Heavy (5)- deployable shield
Trooper (5), smoke grenades and scanners/binoculars (6 / 7?)
support (5) repair tool
officer deployable heavy blaster gun (2)

There was actually 2 people on a server, so I joined that one. Within 5 seconds of spawning in my very first game, I got teamkilled
I must have sacred the guy, he kept apologizing. Of course I forgave him.

I realize I need to do a lot of reading, as I have no idea what devices do and what I'm carrying. Got a few kills in however.

Was a fix we used for when BF2142 1.51 first came out and we had not yet updated First Strike to be compatible, to be used as a temporary fix, but for anyone who is still having trouble even with the updated and now BF2142 1.51 compatible (at least compatible for most people) First Strike, this fix seems to solve the problem they're having.

Also a lot of people who were on last night seemed to be getting Punkbuster issues and getting kicked from the Community Game server. If you're getting this just manually update Punkbuster by going to their official site, that should solve your problem.

So 2142BF with 1.51 patch first. Then First Strike mod afterwards.

Can I ask what order you installed everything in? Maybe there is an issue with First Strike installing after BF2142 1.51 has been installed.

The answer to my problem might come with Windows 7. I've been meaning to do a clean install with a copy of Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit I have. But just haven't wanted to deal with wasting an entire day reformatting, reloading everything, and configuring on that computer yet.

Edit:
The server "{CC} First Strike" is not running punkbuster and is password protected. So it might not be showing up because of certain filters you have on.
Either way, I can't connect to any of the 5 servers yet.

So back to Wrong Guy, this error is an issue a few people have been getting. Which version of BF2142 are you using? Original, Deluxe or on-line purchase?

Mike's BKBS FirstStrike
Rebel Defiance
Official BlackIntel.org First Str
=SBB= First Strike
{CC} First Strike

My ping runs from 140 to 190 in the order above. (I'm guessing all these servers are across the pond from me).
____________________________________

Additional info:
I run Windows XP professional with SP3, all updates current (including DirectX updates)
Processor is an Intel DualCore (6400) running at 2.13GHz
RAM is 4GB (3.37GB showing - 32bit)

System runs smooth on every game I play (2142BF, BC2, Spore, Crysis, etc...).
At idle I have only 27 processes running and 244MB of RAM used.

Error message is that I'm running an old client. First Strike Launcher version is 1015. Clicking update shows I'm current.

Edit: I have already tried some of the suggestions in the other threads I've read - deleting cache, profile, etc...

I have 2142BF and the offical 1.51 patch that came out last month. It plays fine.

I just downloaded the FS mod today and did all the updates. When I go to the server list, I can see 5 servers - all are in red (clicking on them gives the wrong version error).

I seen on the 2142BF UK forum, that a few people recently downloaded the FirstStrike mod and had the same problem. Someone said they were going to look into it but should post on this forum.

I'm running Windows XP pro