The game runs smoothly and anything to do with graphics (such as vsync) has been properly configured. The campaign runs butter smooth.

The lag I am talking about is the network one. Both computers are connected to a router via ethernet cable (no wireless) and both are fairly new machines. The host computer runs the game fine whereas the other one experiences severe "rubberbanding." We tried setting up a dedicated server on a third computer on the LAN but that didn't solve the problem either.

Is Halo 2 Vista really that bad? I haven't tried playing it on LIVE as that is not why I bought it, I am happy playing Halo 3 and reach on xbox live. Has anyone found a way to play this bloated mess on LAN?

I have been able to play lan with no problems as host and as client. I think its not with h2v but something else.
but you should try it live and see how it works, because if you did bought it then I dont see reason why you shoulndnt experiance the full potential of game.

The issue got slightly better when I muted voice chat in the LIVE guide (home button). However, a simple reinstall of Halo 2 completely fixed the problem. This was true for both computers. Maybe it was because I did not have Games for Windows - LIVE installed at the time of the first install and Halo installed an old version which for some reason messed up when autoupdating. When I reinstalled Halo 2, the latest version of Games for Windows - LIVE was already installed.
Weird.
Edited by neebster on Oct 30, 2010 at 03:11 AM
Edited by neebster on Oct 30, 2010 at 12:11 PM