It's odd. I just reinstalled Quake 3 after 4 years of not playing. More or less every time I try to joing a server on quake I get ''INVALID_CDKEY'', when I try to connect. Yes, it is a fully legit copy of Quake, and the CDkey is legit. And it even says ''CDKey appears to be valid, thank you.'' in the CDkey menu.. What's the problem? cry:
Is it a punkbuster server? Me and a few others were having enemy territory troubles with a cd key yesterday. Yet ET is free and has no real key. If so try updating PB.
try unistalling and reinstalling and make sure you delete ALL the associated files. Its sounds like a conflict with old and new information. uninstall completely and reinstall and see what happens