An exception occurs when the game calls for something that doesn't exist. For example, if you play a map that is supposed to have a specific kind of tree scenery in it, the game will look through the map file for that tree. If that tree can not be found various technical things happen causing the game to crash. The result is the "Gathering Exception Data" pop-up. Short answer: Something is wrong with your instalation. You need to reinstall and be sure you dont mess with any of the game's files.

Same thing is happening to me, none of the solutions posted above work. The only thing suggested by the error report is to update halo, and of course the updates don't work with the trial version.

First of all, what are your system specifications? Second, what OS are you running? XP? Vista?

I managed to scavenge up a few solutions for you. The first one, may or may not work; it just depends what is causing the problem. The next one, will most likely fix the problem. Download [url=http://www.vorbis.com/files/1.0.1/windows/OggVorbis-win32sdk-1.0.1.zip]this file[/url] (the website for the file can be found [url=http://www.vorbis.com/]here[/url]). Next go to your main Halo folder located at [b]C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\Halo[/b] by default. Open the file you just downloaded in WinZip; if you don't have WinZip you can download a trial [url=http://www.download.com/WinZip/3000-2250_4-10003164.html?tag=lst-1]here.[/url] In there you want to take the 3 files vorbis.dll, vorbisfile.dll and ogg.dll and put them in your main Halo folder replacing the ones that are already in there. This might do the trick for you. If not, try [url=http://hce.halomaps.org/index.cfm?nid=402]this,[/url] then the following. If the above does not work try going into your firewall settings and select 'Don't Allow Exceptions'. I hear this works for a few people; so only try this if the above fails, since you have to mess with your firewall settings. I hope one of these methods works for you. If they don't, let me know and I'll keep looking for an answer. [i]Edit: Added the middle option.[/i] [Edited on 03.12.2008 1:16 PM PDT]