Punk Buster Service Communication Failure

If you have been getting the Punk Buster "Service Communication Failure" when connecting online, you're not alone. This has been a serious problem since their July 25th release:

Version 1.719 of the PB Client for COD2 has been released to our PB Master Servers for auto-update and to our website download page.

Release Notes for PB Client v1.719:

• the new PB services are no longer optional, see our PB Services FAQ for more info
• the new PB services now support 64 bit flavors of Windows

It seems that their latest release, Version 1.725 A1383 of the PB Client for CoD2, which was released to the PB Master Servers for auto-update and to their website download page and is described as a "maintenance release" may have fixed some of these problems.

One of our BASH Boards regulars, JohnDoe|EagleEye| had this problem and gives us this fix:

For the moment I seem to have fixed the "service communication failure". I don´t know if it was the new PB update (v1725 Sat 4 of August 2007) or a PB command I introduced that fixed the problem. Anyway...I will tell you what i did:

1) Connected to a server and get kicked for "Service communication Failure"
2) Unistalled the PnkBstrA and PnkBstrB services with the pbsvc.exe
3) Reinstalled the two services
4) Updated the PB version manually to v1725 with the Pbsetup.exe program
5) Ran CoD multiplayer
6) Entered PB command: /pb_security 0 using the console
7) Connected to my Clan Server
8) Played normally.

I still want to see what happens in the following days.I hope the issue doesn´t show up again

NOTE:

PB_Security [0=no, 1=yes]:

When set to 0, PunkBuster will accept all "update" files without verifying that they are authentic; the default is 1 which should not normally be changed except for LAN environments where there is no Internet Access and/or you fully trust the Servers you are connecting to.

Let us know if *you* are having problems with Punk Buster. If you are register in our forums and tell us about it in our Tech section.