If you are running SWBF2 on Windows 7 and are experiencing odd visual problems/crashing, simply put it on Windows XP compatibility mode and all the issues seem to vanish. The only downside appears to be that the profiles get cleared for some reason.

Just thought I'd like to let you guys know.

Running a program in XP compatibility is a standard troubleshooting practice for Vista/Win7 users and should be something you'd always try whenever any program's not working right. This fixes the issue for some and not for others. There's also bunch of threads scattered throughout this forum talking about BF2 and Vista/Win7, for example this, if putting it in compatibility mode won't work for you.

Yeah, I realized this later on. And as it turns out, turning compatibility mode on creates problems with the 1.3 patch and while it seems to fix crashes for some modmaps, it doesn't fix other problems that as it turns out were probably caused by my Radeon.