Oh lovely Punkbuster....

[Moving_Target]

....how I extremely dislike you. Seriously, it stops more nonhackers from playing games than the hackers themselves.

So I've been wanting to play CoD4 and BF2 online lately (Mainly due to BFBC2). But I can't, because of pnkbstr. Specifically pnkbstra.exe. Failure to communicate. I have it and B with full rights in my firewalls and I didn't have problems before. No mods.

I've been deleting the pb folder from the respected games folder and then running pbsetup.exe. Nothing worked. Then I tried pbsvc.exe. Well that worked, except I got a new error with pnkbstrk.sys. I did something and landed me back at A communication failure. Now pbsvc.exe starts to run. Does like 3 lines and just closes.

I'm at a loss. I've searched the web some bit, but no solutions.
Anyone know something I can do so I can enjoy playing online again?
Thanks.

[mswf]

Have you tried to find an updated version of punkbuster? Maybe it can't communicate because they've upgraded/changed the database?
I mean, I have no idea of the history of punkbuster, but I just thought this up.

[Moving_Target]

I see what you're saying. Yeah. That's what pbsetup.exe does. It updates the pbfolders.

[mswf]

This one?
http://www.evenbalance.com/index.php?page=pbsetup.php

[Moving_Target]

Yup that one. v3.4. It says BF2 and CoD4 are up to date, but PnkBstrA.exe is still being cut off.

[mswf]

Just trying; Which OS are you running?

[Nihillo]

I had "Failure to communicate" errors plenty of times while trying to connect to BF2 servers, I kind of solved it by updating my punkbuster, it still happens every now and then, but all I have to do is reboot my computer, sometimes more than once.

I hate punkbuster too.

[Moving_Target]

@mswf: Vista and thank you for helping me out.

@Nihillo: Yeah, I just restarted my computer and pbsvc.exe ran fully. Said something about PnkBstrK.sys. That it doesn't exist. So I think I'll search for a download, but I doubt that exists.

Ok. Here's the error now.

Failure: PnkBstrB.exe driver failure (PnkBstrK.sys) ffab.

I'll personally search later. I have to get some homework done first. Still thanks mswf, nihillo and anyone else who helps.

[Nova Hawk]

I've recently reinstalled BF2142 and I had this problem as well. They way I fixed is:

1. Right click on the icon and hit "properties".
2. Then go to where it says "compatibility" and check the box that says "run as administrator".
3. Hit apply and you should be good to go.

[Moving_Target]

This sounds good. Which icon exactly? The game?

[Nova Hawk]

This sounds good. Which icon exactly? The game?

Ya, just right click on the game icon and it should work. I haven't gotten it since.

[Moving_Target]

Yeah, going into perferences and having it run as admin rights works with BF2.

I'll try CoD4 later. If I remember correctly, it does fix it, but resets your stats.