Punkbuster... or playerbuster to be more precise. :(

[Shalghar]

Hi everyone.
As evenbalance.com-"support" keeps copying simple FAQ-Stuff as "answers", heres a problem that always occurs with my system and PB.

Once in about a month, pnkbstrb.exe will not be started anymore by pnkbstra.exe. the only known solution is complete reinstall of BF1942 AND PB.

Test program, pbsvc and other stuff do show me, that pnkbstrb.exe is not activated but do not show me why.
Filemon surveillance did not clarify, as file access to pnkbstrb.exe by pnkbstra.exe returns success, the only file access failure is the access to pnkbuster logfiles as they do not exist.

Anyone any ideas? I tried with and without different firewalls, with every little system set to wide open for everything and still no chance to get that pnkbsterb.exe started. Frankly i do not have the slightest clue why this always happens about a month after reinstallation and no, i dont have vista and i even busted the autoupdate-trojan (wuau*.*) on disk and in registry.

I wont suggest turning that (censored) software off, as some people seem to believe that this thingy really prevents cheating but i dont know whats the point in a third party monopoly system that clearly kicks non-cheaters and is a real pain in... you know what.

[Sir Die-a-lot]

Have you tried the easy way and donwloaded Pbsetup and manually update your PunkBuster ?

[Shalghar]

Got everything freshly downloaded, got everything tested... PBsetup tells me that all my Punkbuster crapware is new and shiny (newest version).
Well i really de- and reinstalled everything with the newest version, made some registry cleaning software do its job, searched for malware, checked for driver updates, servicepacks and other stuff.... you could say i did everything but reinstalling the complete system.

Hell, i even made a firmware upgrade to my router.
All to no avail. Everything not using punkbuster works fine.

So i sadly had to de- and reinstall not only Punkbuster stuff but the whole battlefield game.
et voila, it works again... for about a month as my expierience showed me the last three times.

After this period of grace, Pnkbstera.exe will again fail to start pnkbsterb.exe and the whole story will start again.

[Sir Die-a-lot]

You run Vista or Xp ? What firewall do you use (software, not the hardware)? What anti-virus do you have running ?
All these could be the culprit.

[Shalghar]

Win2k SP3, 32bit, single(core) processor with Outpost and without any firewall or strange hardware as SCSI controllers (Starforce taught me the hard way that scsi hardware aint a good idea when wanting to play "protected" games. ). I tried everything possibly connected to software including driver downgrades and other weird stuff. Nothing worked.

The strangest thing about this is the one month delay after the last complete reinstall. Then Punkbuster beginst to fail more and more, finally being even unable to find pnkbusterb.exe though its in the same directory it always was.

I ran filemon while being kicked and strangely every read access to pnkbusterb.exe returned success, only the never created logfiles were not found. Still strange, this also happens when all is setup fresh, new and working. Exactly the same things happening on the filesystem side but pnkbusterb.exe is not started anymore.

In addition, punkbuster ran well since i was forced to install it over 4 years ago. On some BF1942 servers where the older punkbuster version still runs, the only problem is triple lag until punkbuster finally stops whining about the "too old" server version and then everything is running smooth and "kickless".

[seadogs]

hmm, does it happen at the same date each month or in the same time frame?

if so there is probably a little file that shouldn't be on your system with a nice count down timer on it and when it hits a certain date each month the computer says no. Check out the folder, see whats lying around (it may be a hidden file so you need enable hidden files)

[Shalghar]

Well it seems i found out whats the problem with playerbuster.
Pnkbustera.exe insist on having write access in /system32 folder and this interferes with WFP and with user accounts with restricted write access sometimes.

As my logs show, pnkbustera.exe always overwrites pnkbusterb.exe, then starts the newly created pnkbusterb.exe when a game starts and creates a log only after the write process was successful (and sometimes not even then).

Theres the whole problem, software writing unnecessarily in forbidden grounds. By the way, if the overwrite process takes too long or ist not reported successful in time (deadline seems to be about 2-3 seconds), pnkbusterb.exe will not be started. This is the reason why players get kicked in game after 10 seconds or so.

I couldn´t pinpoint exactly why this happened to me with several weeks delay, but instead of reinstalling everything i only need to uninstall playerbuster completely, reinstall it with admin privilege and give the pnkbustera.exe full write access in my system directories. Seems as if i´m forced to play on admin account as the playerbuster files can not be moved to safe/ non system directories.

btw. why "punk"buster? It doesnt prevent cheating so what´s it for`?

[seadogs]

How about installing the whole game including player/punk buster into a separate drive?

All my Games are on E:\

and my BF games are in:

E:\Games\BF1942

With that folder having full read/write permissions for all users. No admin rights required and as its not a system folder it doesn't matter.

[Shalghar]

Doesn´t work as Playerbuster installs the files i mentioned in /System32 without letting you have a choice at it.
Game installation is on secondary drive, no worries without PB. Had no worries with OLD PB.

Only after they divided their program into pnkbustera.exe, pnkbusterb.exe and pnkbusterk.sys and the A component always overwrites the B component (without changing a single bit but the write process MUST happen to get that crapware to work) i got that problem.

Well whatever, i dont care anymore. If it gets stuck again, it gets a kick via Process Explorer, gets restarted and then mostly works. No need 4 reinstalls till now, knock on wood.

Seems as if the write access is getting stuck randomly as the pnkbustera.exe is an admin process, it normally shouldn`t but who cares.

PB"support" has given up on it ever since i showed them detailed logs of what their software does without my permission. As long as i can play, i don´t care.

As long as software companies get your money, they don´t care if the soft works as wanted. So maybe that´s a way to call it quits.

They don´t care if it works, i don´t care as long as i can play and all´s well.

[seadogs]

fairy snuff.

You could probably edit where the files are in System Registry but thats a bit risky if you don't know what your doing.

[Shalghar]

Ok, Playerbuster strikes again.
While Mini Rambo was reading, that i was kicked due to "loosing key packets", the problem on my side was a machinegun-announcement reading "O/S privilege notice" or crap like that spamming the comms with about 5 blahblahs per second... this misbehaviour of that so called "anticheat" crapware began about a minute after start.

I do not know if that new problem will persist. Should that happen, does anyone know about a non-punkbuster-infected server?

Since my last efforts to get the "support" at evenbalance.com to help me, i will not even consider bothering those (censored)(censored) again. Waste of time.

So if thats it, thats it. I really enjoyed the JiF server but not so much that im getting in just for one or two minutes before playerbuster strikes again.

I tried to save the game by deavtivating everything except Bf1942 and Playerbuster, yet to no avail.
Fate.

[Shalghar]

Ok next try today and its "ignoring queries #9006" this time.
As for the comms spam, thats the same.

Anyone any ideas?

[seadogs]

Right Uninstall the game completley then press start RUN

Type Regedit and press Ok. This will load the windows Registry.

Underneath Computer there are some options, click HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
and in that subcat press SOFTWARE


Scroll down till you get to EA GAMES and Even Balance.

If you have no other games running on Even Balance then it is 'safe' to delete the registry entry. Also delete the EA Games folder, But IF YOU HAVE other EA games, then delete the BF1942 sub folders.

Do the same in Electronic Arts folder. and also delete PunkBuster for BF1942.


Click okay to this will stop some software working stuff. Now got to

X:\Program Files\BF1942 game

delete this folder and all sub folders.


REBOOT

Install the game as per ususal and see if it works.


*Be careful in regedit, editing too many things can screw you over*.

[Shalghar]

Well i always remove every removeable bit of Playerbuster whenever it screws up again... so to speak about every month.

What i cannot remove or even change is all registry entries, because eventrojan.com decided to put three keys in as legacy drivers. As they do not disappear when deinstalling and neither regedit nor regcleaner have the ability to delete legacy stuff the only way to delete that unwanted key would be complete reinstall of the whole system, which i will not do.

I will try another BF42 version and key these days. Just to make sure that ww2 edition is not the problem so i´ll reinstall from the antique version and update via patches to 1.61b .

Frankly, im fed up with Playerbuster screwing up since the last three "updates". I know i am not the only one being kicked out for mysterious technical reasons, but that doesnt help me at all. And i still do not know why that malware "has" to run on every acceptable server.

Since Bf42 is the only game forcing me to accept playerbuster malware, one solution is tochange my favourite game.


UPDATE:
I reinstalled everything and then, by coincidence, decided to check out my router logs.

10. Mai 2008 12:00:07 Unallowed 192.168.xxx.xxx access http://crl.microsoft.com/pki/crl/products/whqlpca.crl

Did not believe it had to do with PB oder BF42, so i cleared the logs and switched back to game, was kicked again and... The entry was there again.
Any hints how to identify, which program tried to send to M$?

[seadogs]

have a look in your firewall (McAfee or whatever) and see what its been letting in/out. It will tell you what program it was.

Have you tried booting in Safe Mode, logging in as Administrator and deleting the reg keys then?

Cheers
Dom.