Punkbuster Issues

A big problem at present is Punkbuster. In fact the problems it is causing are getting bigger by the day.

Ever since Evenbalance released the compulsory Punkbuster services players have been getting kicked and disconnected left, right & centre across all PB-Enabled games.

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A bit of information on Punkbuster and the new services then:

Punkbuster used to just run as 'extra' files that updated themselves when necessary during the playing of a game online.
However, with the advent of Vista people's default user accounts did not necessarily have 'Administrator Permissions'. This effectively stopped punkbuster from communicating properly with both the game it was supposed to protect and Evenbalance's servers.

So, they decided to trial some services for some time. These are .exe program files that auto-run when you start your PC and logon.
The upside is that now users didn't need to have Administrator privileges to run punkbuster properly, and the compatibility of punkbuster was at an all-time high.
But the downside...well...there isn't just one, there are many!

Firstly, now punkbuster runs all the time unless a user knows how to stop/disable the services.
If the user doesn't quite know what they are doing, they may disable the services and not get them running again, meaning that punkbuster will not work properly when playing a game.
This will result in the very 'disconnect' problems that the services were initally desgined to rectify.

The punkbuster services (PnkBstrA.exe & PnkBstrB.exe, and also the system file PnkBstrK.sys) run all the time unless disabled or removed.
They can add a 'lag' to an otherwise healthy system. This is most apparent when running an older system, that can feel the effects of a new program that steals CPU-Cycles and eats up system memory.
This is not just when running a PB game either, this can be when just browsing the web or performing a virus-scan etc.
Just as a quick example, when I used to run CoD2 years ago I used to get a latency (ping) of about 38, which is lowest I could get with a decent close-by server with my connection.
Today I get about 45-ish as the best I can possibly get. And this is with an improved internet connection, with lower latency in general.
So why all the extra overhead? Enter Punkbuster! It really is noticeable now the impact that it can have on both your gaming connection and your system in general.

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If you are having troubles with punkbuster, and are getting messages in game that are the same or similar to the ones below, follow the guidelines recommended.

"Losing Key Packets" - One of the most common ones. It means that important data packets are been lost either 'to' or 'from' the server. Check your firewall to make sure that the data is been allowed to pass. If using a router, depending on the make/model you may need to manually open ports. However this is a very old practice now, and most times you do not need to touch any settings relating to that.

"PnkBstrX failed to initialize" (where X is either A or B depending on the Punkbuster service) - This was very common in the early days of the Punkbuster services, especially on Battlefield 2 and Battlefield 2142. It means that the punkbuster service cannot start properly when queried by the game. Go to Start Menu -> Run, type "services.msc" without the quotes, and check in the list to make sure the two services are set to automatic. Restart the PC.

"Blocked O/S Privileges" - This is telling you that punkbuster cannot start because the current user does not have the permissions required to allow punkbuster to run. 90% of the time, the user will be running Windows Vista. You need to ensure that the Punkbuster services are installed properly. This is the main problem that arose, that required evenbalance to release the services in the first place. See below.

In all of these cases I recommend you make doubly-sure that punkbuster is installed and up to date. There are two tools that you will need:

pbsvc.exe - The service installer program. You can use this to manually install the PB services should the auto-install from within game fail. Or to remove/re-install the services after any problems you may get, such as corrupted files.

pbsetup.exe - The main update utility that has been out for a long time now. Use this regularly if you have to. This will update the PB game-specific files that are stored in the relevent game directory. There should never be an issue with updating in game unless some files have become corrupt, or the server in question is running an old-version etc and messing up the works.

Click the above links and download the files into a folder on your desktop. When you run them, they might make a bit of a mess of your desktop if you don't do that!
If the links stop working, then it means Evenbalance have rotated the downloads to prevent direct-linkage. Just run a google search for those filenames and download them from the official Evenbalance/Punkbuster website.

I could go into the specifics of what each of the three punkbuster service files do, but that would be a waste of time, and unecessary for me to do that.
If you want to know how they work you can see this on the punkbuster website. I recommend the FAQ section. Its very informative and gives you quite a bit of info. You can also see update history of punkbuster, and therefore see when they added and changed stuff.

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Any other troubles your having, check on their website for the latest troubleshooting info (if there is any), and if your luck doesn't improve, post in this forum.

Cheers

A nice, simple, perfectly safe way to disable Punkbuster when not needed and then re-enable before playing games is to do the following (this is what I use):

Create a new .txt document on your desktop and open it up in notepad/wordpad.

Input the following:

Code:


net stop PnkBstrA
net stop PnkBstrB


Save, and close the file. Rename it to "Stop Punkbuster.bat" (the file extension is very important).

Now running this 'batch' file, as its known, will cause windows to close the punkbuster services that like to run in memory all the time and just generally be a nuisance.

Of course we now need a way to re-enable them when we start to play again otherwise Punkbuster won't work properly and you'll get kicked etc.

So, create another file as you did above, but this time call it "Start Punkbuster.bat" (again with that extension). Now make the content as follows:

Code:


net start PnkBstrA
net start PnkBstrB


There you go. An easy way to enable and disable punkbuster whenever you want!