We've been punked! *UPDATE 2*: Lowkee edition

BASH...the Blog reader, Lowkee (BF2142 player) made a stunning discovery recently and posted it in the comments section in our article on the PunkBuster lag article on this website (We've been punked! *UPDATE 1*).

I did not want his comments buried, so I am posting them here. Please read if you have been having lag issues with Punk Buster:

Although it pains me to release this fix where EvenBalance can read it and give me absolutely no credit for wasting hours of my life in finding a solution, here is a proof of concept, as such, of the PunkBuster service bug:

Trillian == lag in-game
ICQ == lag in-game
ATI Control Center == lag in-game
Winamp == lag in-game (in certain instances)

What do these programs all have in common? Global Hotkeys.

It seems the new PB service chokes if any application hooks into for global hotkey support. So, disabling global hotkeys in all of your application will bring your FPS rate back to normal with no more slowdown due to PB beta testing on your PC.

As an added FPS boost, setting the following in your BF 2142 (or any other PB enabled game) console will also help:

(type in the game console)
pb_system 1
pb_sleep 500
pb_writecfg

Happy playing everyone, in spite of PunkBuster.

-Lowkee

This is an awesome find. Lowkee. I've been having issues myself with PB (as with nearly all my COD2 friends) and your comments are quite interesting. I am running Itunes (I believe that program uses Global Hotkeys).

I'll be experimenting with this and report back with any positive information.

I would encourage our readership to do the same. Please post your findings in the comments section of this post.

THANK YOU LOWKEE! And keep up the good work!