Act I Flagship vandalism mission

I think I made a monumental mistake when I went back to save the game before proceeding to the flagship to paint it. I reloaded and the paint droid was gone, so I go back to the League meeting place and the paint droid is there, waiting to be picked up. I dock to it, go to the flagship's area, go to the munitions dump and undock the droid. When I try to remote control it I get an ERROR: Invalid REM security code/protocol message. Is there any way around this? Is there something I'm missing? Is there any way to bypass the mission if I can't complete it? Please help me. I love this game so much and cannot get past this..
Thanks loads..
Bob Trufant

hey man u can move on to act 2 mission 1 if u want but i would think u would want to just start back befor u had this problem which i know sucks because you'll have to redo a couple missions but it doesnt talk long . i dont think there is a mod yet to skip a mission so u dont have much of a choice. if u do decide to go on to act 2 , download the saved file from here:
www.i-war2.com/downloads_6.htm . when its done unzip it into the iw2 save files dictory . its going to replace 1 of your curent missions though. then go into the game and load it . thats all . sorry i couldnt help more .

04-21676

Hey Playboy..
Hey thanks loads for the savegame. It's a lot better than replaying the whole game over, which I started to do and I'm really not up to all the little idiosyncrisies in all the scripts. It's a great game but I'd still rather experience the hangups only once Infinite thanks to you for this savegame. As they say, it's certainly better than nothing..
Bob