We've been punked!

Has anyone noticed increased lag, higher pings, packet loss, lower FPS and loss of system resources lately when playing online?

Well, it can probably traced to the latest Punkbuster updates.

The latest updates of Punkbuster have certainly wreaked havoc with us here in the COD2 community.

What you may not have noticed is that Evenbalance (the authors of PunkBuster) have added two new processes to their PB suite:

PnkBstrA.exe and PnkBstrB.exe!

That brings them up to a grand total of four processes total - all robbing you of system resources while your playing, albeit for a good cause, I suppose.

What are these new services? Try reading this:

http://www.evenbalance.com/index.php?page=pbsvcfaq.php

Beginning with PunkBuster client version 1.500, we have extended the PunkBuster Anti-Cheat system to operate without the requirement to run PunkBuster supported games with Administrator privileges when running under Windows 2000, XP, or Vista. In order to do this, we have developed new Windows service components to work with the PunkBuster system. We are currently conducting open beta testing for the new service components. To participate in the open beta testing, issue the "pb_installservice" command in your game console after joining a server (at this point, you must still be running as the Administrator user). This command will attempt to install a new PunkBuster service called PnkBstrA. Alternatively, the PBSVC Setup Program can be used as a standalone installer/uninstaller for the PnkBstrA service; PBSVC can be downloaded from here. Once the PnkBstrA service is running along with a new PB client version 1.500 and higher, running PB enabled games under Windows 2000, XP or Vista no longer requires Administrator privileges.

It appears that both executables are part of the latest Punkbuster update. And one, PnkBstrB.exe seems to be looking for cheats on your drive.

The upshot is a very significant increase in system resources while playing. Try bringing up your Task Manager while playing to take a peek. Some people are seeing 30-40% of the their CPU resources being taken over! This is higher than what COD uses most times.

While my initial anger at this made me point to PB...the real culprit is the cheating hacker! Well what can you do about it?

SOLUTIONS?

BASH has found a few solutions that have been found successful by non-COD gamers and we post them here. We have not tried them out and you should use them with great caution:


A. This was found referenced on http://forum.americasarmy.com

1. Click on the start menu, click on Run.... Type services.msc.
2. Under services find PnkBstrA. Right click it and stop it from the option in the drop-down menu.
3. Now double click it. On startup type select disabled.
4. Repeat 2 and 3 for PnkBstrB.
4. Go to your windows/system32 folder.
5. Find the two files, PnkBstrA.exe and PnkBstrB.exe and delete them.
6. Go to AA/system/pb folder.
7. Delete PnkBstrB.exe and PnkBstrK.
8. Go to http://www.americasarmy.com/includes/bumper.php?goto=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.evenbalance.com%2Findex.php%3Fpage%3Dpbsetup.php and download the pbsetup for your operating system.
9. Install. Select game directory and update PB.


B. Also from americasarmy

1) delete Punkbuster folder contents in system folder
2) goto start>control panel>administrative tools>services
3) goto extended tab select PnkBstrA. Double click it to see properties you will see a drop down menu select disabled.
4) goto PnkBstrB Double click it to see properties you will see a drop down menu select disabled.
5 ) Download this for your OS http://www.evenbalance.com/ind...tup.php
6) run pbsetup select your game directory and update PB
7) should be gone now go play with out lag!

Both solutions are similar. The folks who have come up with the solutions say their lag was gone once they performed the tweaks and PunkBuster has not kicked them from any server.

The jury is still out on these fixes...stay tuned.


Notes:

Punkbuster support is apparently telling its users that CPU usage has increased with this latest update; however, PB will use "unused" CPU cycles as it completes scanning your system for hacks. They are stating that this will not be detrimental to gameplay.


Related posts:

remove those un-needed processes

protect yourself from malware