i dont know if this is your problem or if you have fixed it but what i have figured out with my troubleshooting is that if you have applied any no cd fix or crack the game wont patch. just uninstall the game reinstall and patch. i was trying to get past the never ending load screen and tired 1.03 us patch and it wouldnt work. then i realized that i still had a .exe that wasnt the original and uninstalled and tried to apply the patch with the original .exe and it worked. i dont know if this will help but it seemed to me that it was the reason why i couldnt patch. hope this helps.