No, I had retail version. So now what I did was I purchased the game... again.. online. Now it works great. Thing is now I have 2 cd keys, the retail version and the online verion. so new question...

I want my friend to play with me, instead of shipping him the CD can I give him my store account (online purchase game, I trust him 100% with my password) so he can download the game and then send him the cd key of the retail game so he can activate and play with me? It would avoid the whole fuss of sending game by post and waiting a week for him to discover game with me.

edit: I never used the previous cd key to connect online as I couldnt get game to update properly, so it has never been used before.