PB freakup again...

[Shalghar]

Hi to everyone who might still remember me.
Since one another trojan update, Playerbuster has managed to evenbalance my solution with the removeable harddisc.

To cut it short:
Whatever those evenbalance guys tweaked this time, even on a new and shiny Win2k Installation (that means from repartitioning to complete format and then install) with only sp4, DX9.0c and of course the mandatory drivers installed, with only battlefield in version 1.61 and newest playerbuster package on it, it will not let me play any longer on any pb server.

It is the good old "O/S exception notice" in game console follwoed by being kicked with "9006 ignoring queries" again that i missed for such a long time and sometimes there are also some error messages that do not appear in pb logfiles and only flash up in screen so fast that i cannot read them but still have the ability to get me kicked.

I´ve already tried evenbalance nonsupport, waiting for about half a year for any answer not being copied faq stuff i already know since my last problems, i also tried evenbalance fanboyland (AKA:"punksbusted.com") and some really weird forums also.

Not a chance.
All running good on non-pb-infested servers.
Any clues, suggestions or weird ideas?


Win2ksp4, tried with old and new nvidia drivers, all on admin account, no restrictions whatsoever, no firewall, no antivir, nothing except bf42 and pb on system. Oh, and pbsvc tests do not run through but hang on "checking punkbusterk driver status" for about three days solid - then i had enough and made a shutdown.

[[JiF]Sgt Shellshocked]

Can't you install xp and have it dual boot?

[[JiF]Mike]

Are you logged in as an administrator, or with administrator privs?

[Shalghar]

As stated before:
Win2ksp4, tried with old and new nvidia drivers, all on admin account, no restrictions whatsoever, no firewall, no antivir, nothing except bf42 and pb on system.

No Firewall messing around, no Antivirus installed, nothing but bf42 and PB as software except System including DX9.0c and drivers.

Only account is admin account, everything has been set free for all users and fake users (like "user" "system" and such) read/write access.
Even system fake user "jeder" (meaning everyone/every program) has full access to everything.

The mandatory older/newer driver roulette has been played to no avail. I even downgraded to DX8.1 and it did not make any difference.

Pbsetup and pbsvc have been run in the newest version.

Since i do not own any XP or newer Windows and PB is the only software i am forced to use that causes issues every so often i do not consider buying a new Systrem just for one "cheat protection" a good solution.

Any method to get BF42 working under some Linux on my antique hardware?
Or is there BF42 for IX anywhere?

[[JiF]Mike]

Is your hard drive ntfs or fat? Shouldn't make a difference I wouldn't think..but ya never know until ya try. I would suggest ntfs if it's fat.

The one thing I have learned when I run into problems like this is that it usually ends up being the one thing I assumed was one way..and it ended up being the other way when I did finally check. I know you've checked the basics, but are you sure you actually 'checked'? I'm not trying to insult you or anything...I don't know you so we have to start with the basic stuff.

One thing you might want to consider is running a thorough ram test. If it's older hardware you might have some bad ram, or some leaky caps that are causing problems. A good ram tester can be found at http://www.memtest.org/. As for leaky caps you really can't 'test' for them, you have to visually inspect your motherboard/video card/other for any bulging or leaking caps.

If I think of anything else I'll post it.

[Shalghar]

Well RAM test was one of the first hardware related "suspects" that i already questioned.
Got GRUB as Bootselector and the Memtest build in there is quite thorough.
Registry cleanup was already done with different tools but did not help. Well at least it did not make the whole stuff worse.

All HDD are NTFS, Partition sizes are too big for anything else. (OK the Linux partition is ext2fs but that´s a thing windows doesn´t know about).

Already checked for power supply voltages (3.31, 5.14, 11.92 and -11.97 Volt), have tested several BIOS settings including the slowest ones, was messing around with AGP aperture size and AGP mode, have been stress testing with benchmarks for processor, RAM and graphics card including personal check of hardware temperature in case the built in ptc (or ntc, whatever they use) are faulty.

On Modem stuff i tried firmware upgrades, deactivating any filters and protection measures in the router, checking for ripple current in the power supplies and doing weird traceroute, loopback and ping stuff to innocent servers just to check if anything of strange data packages might get lost.

Basically i did everything but a complete reinstall and since i had some time when PB refused to let me play every few weeks and i reinstalled about every month at least once the complete system with BF42 and PB i have a bad feeling, that evenbalance crapped up that useless software once again so bad, that i might once again have to do the big bang every few weeks. Or days.

As far as network and file scanner shows, pnkbusterb.exe is not started and no pb updates while runing do occur. Strange but this was also strange last time: All file access concerning PB stuff is reported by filemon to be successful.

Since evenbalance does not give a single hint what exactly their crapware wants to have to let the hostage player get gaming and since most forums either don´t tell anything useful or don´t have any clues except users with problems being insulted as being too dumb to use PBSVC or being cheaters, i think i am once again forced to try around any weird stuff anyone might suggest.

I might even go for a cup of tea with a mechanical sensor sticking in it connected to serial port.
Maybe engraving old viking runes on the cd tray or have my wife try her "reiki" stuff on the PC will do.

[[JiF]Mike]

hmm... Have you tried running windows with just windows on a hdd? In other words no grub, no ext2 parts...basically nothing to do with linux on the pc? I know it sux, but it's something to try. Wouldn't make any sense to me if it worked...but stranger things have happened.

[Sir Die-a-lot]

The hardest thing for me to understand is that it only happens to you. You must have something installed on your machine (hardware or software) that is causing all this greif. With the thousands of people using either Xp or Vista and are able to play with no problems whatsoever, it has to be strictly on your side. And that may explain why Evenbalance can't really help you if you are one in a million.

[Shalghar]

Well first i am also astonished that all those pb errors only occur after some time and then get worse quite fast.
Second, i cannot pinpoint the cause as i already tried with a HDD removeable rack, so a pure windows including drivers also shows the problems that occur on my "full" HDD.
Problem with EB is that they don´t give ANY hints to the minimum requirements of pb stuff so its just poking around in the dark as the error messages don´t give any clue either.

All of that crap happened after some time earlier, but this time it could not be removed by reformatting the "bf42" Harddisc again with only bf, win and pb on it. The very same software that worked about a year suddenly fails completely, and that means for me that it´s not the battlefield HDD i use solely for gaming that causes the problems.

So something was changed on EB side as all other stuff worked for about a year and hardware diagnostics do show that all is functioning.

It might be total incompatibility with win2k but why can´t they say that 2k is not supported anymore honestly and save me time searching?

That´s why i asked for a Linux solution/linux bf42 version since i am not ready to pay about 100 Euro for old XP.

[[JiF]Mike]

Not that I would encourage you to pirate software but XP is not hard to come by on the web. Heck I think MS did at one time provide it for download so you could kind of try it for 30 days. So from strictly a testing mind set, grabbing an iso of XP out there would at least let you know if that would fix your problem.

It's sounds like you've tried nearly everything. If your able to test with XP and it doesn't fix it I'm gonna have to believe this is a hardware related issue and there's just something about your setup that PB just doesn't like.