Quake3World

Hi all,

Great forum, I hope someone can help me .

Im at my wits end....been playing q3 for years usually on the same few servers, with never a PB problem, until a week ago, and now i cant stay in a server for more than 20 seconds without being kicked for 'losing key packets'. I read up a bit about pb problems and followed the advice from Evenbalance...i.e. i downloaded and ran pbsvc.exe to uninstall PB, then manually deleted my PB folder from q3 folder, restarted computer and ran pbsvc.exe again to reinstall PB, then used the pbsetup.exe to update it.

While reinstalling PB i was getting the error "**ERROR: Could not get handle to Windows firewall profile: The requested section was not present in the activation context." What the heck does that mean??? I turned off my software firewall, I dont run Windows firewall (XP Home), and I even tried with my antivirus (Avast) turned off.

I proceeded anyway and at the end of the installation, after it runs tests it said "Tests completed successfully without error". And after running pbsetup.exe i got the message "All available updates have been applied".

Im still getting kicked for 'losing key packets', yet when im out of the game i can see that PnkBstrA.exe and PnkBstrB.exe are still running in my system processes.

It makes me think that it might be a router problem (Billion 7401), i tried forwarding the appropriate ports for the PB update, but im not sure on this router of how do that correctly.

Ive read that there have been problems with this newer PB system, and im hoping someone here can help me sort this mess out. I miss playing!

Sorry for the long winded post, just wanted to include enough detail that someone might know how to help me. Thanks for reading

I got the same problem.
What ppl suggest on diffrent forums is this:

-open up "run" from the start menu

-enter services.msc

-find pnkbstrA & B in the list - if you can't find B try to run quake and then try to find it again

-doubleclick on pnkbstrA and disable it + turn it off

-set pnkbstrB to automatic

-reboot your computer and try again

this didn't work for me though, dunno why, try diffrent combinations in services.msc and maybe it'll work for you.
Please tell me if you find out how to disable this annoying problem.
Ah what the heck, stay in touch anyways.
My whole error messeges goes like this:

"RESTRICTION: Losing Key Packets (K)ffa0"
and
"RESTRICTION: Losing Key Packets (B)ffff0001"

It would've been great if anyone could help us!
Please please please.
I beg you.
- Cheers
/clown

i dont think that your Software firewall is off... Esp if its a Norton product.

Atleast all my sec.softwares is off when trying to connect to a server, and that I'm sure of.
Hm, the new pb is really shite.
And it's prolly all because of vista. =/ :icon23:

challq, its a real bummer isnt it! But thanks for your suggestion.

I did the services.msc thing, but i could only stay in the server for 5 seconds max, and had the (A) FFFF0001 error...tried reconnecting...but no good.

So i reversed the services.msc thing, tried again.....back to 20 seconds before getting kicked, but the error messages were different e.g. (B) BC7 1F and (B) BB8 F.....?? its getting weirder.

Both my PnkBstrA.exe and PnkBstrB.exe are running in system processes all the time, are yours?

Im on XP Home, what is your OS?

Are you using a router or just a modem? If a router, have you looked into that possibly being the cause of the problem? Im leaning that way, but dont know what to do about it!

I have posted in the Q3 discussion section of this forum (copied/pasted my original post)...so maybe look over there for extra suggestions too. If you find ANYTHING else to try, PLEASE let me know and ill do the same.

pnkbstrA is running all the time and pnkbstrB is started when I've tried to enter a server. I think I'm using XP pro [US]. But maybe I have home edition aswell, dunno really.
Hm, and for my router, I really don't know, punkbuster has worked as long as I've played quake, and I've never had to open/close ports for it to work. But maybe it has something to do with the router.
Hm, I'm going to look into it.
If pnkbstrA&B is sending information to the pb-server and my router has closed those ports, that may be the problem.
But I'm really not that good with computers, so I'm probably wrong.
Hm, anyways, I'll try to find the port# and open it up, in the router, and I'll see what happens, probably nothing, but it's really worth a try.
What mod do you play?
Hm, maybe our q3 days are over, eh?

When we had the q3w servers, pb was usually disabled. It's more trouble than its worth. Its not like it's even close to preventing hacks.

I had the error once while trying to play the qw beta, but no continuous issues.

Challq,

This copied/pasted from the evenbalance pages:

"PunkBuster Clients use outgoing UDP Port 24349 to get security info from the PunkBuster Master Servers, PunkBuster Servers use UDP Ports 24349 and 24305."

Ive never had to fiddle with the router before for q3, but i have now opened up these ports....didnt work for me, but you try it, never know your luck!

Also this from the same page, re some known problems with these routers and possible solutions:

# Linksys - possible solution: Use firmware 1.44.2
# Motorola - possible solution: Update to latest firmware
# Netgear - possible solution: Disable SPI (statefull packet inspection)

I put a trouble ticket in to evenbalance a few days ago and i just discovered a reply asking for some more info about my problem. Have you submitted a ticket to them yet? It seems that they do reply, contrary to popular belief lol.

The mod i usually play is just unlagged FFA on a couple of nice aussie servers, but there is a couple of non PB servers here, no where near as smooth or low ping, but its still a game if i cant work this problem out.

Anyway try the port nos. on your router and let me know what happens!

I've also sent a troubleticket to PB. And I got one answer, because I sent it to the wrong staff. Hm, and I'm trying to fix this router issue now, but I can't find the place where I open ports. I've found something that's called SUA Server, where I can enter ports etc. But I don't know what it does. It looks like I need an IP # aswell. Hmm, damnit.
My router is a ZYxEL (334? , don't really know). Have you got any experience with that one? (Hehe, what are the odds?)

Hm, well, I'll try diffrent combinations for portopening now. But what zyxel says is that I should have a submenu that's called "Port Forwarding". But I really dont. =/

Are you making any success yet?
I play ThreeWave 1.7, and there are no servers without PB protection.

Wow, I tried that Trigger Port thing, but I really didn't know what I was doing.
And then I opened pbsetup.exe and looked for updates, and there were one update, so I installed it.
Then I tried to run quake and got a new error saying:

"RESTRICTION: Service Communication Failure: PnkBstrB.exe driver failure (PnkBstrK.sys)"

Really cool huh? xD

challq, use port forwarding, it's heaps more reliable than triggering. Take a look here: http://www.portforward.com/english/rout ... efault.htm

Regarding the PB error: delete the pb folder in your Q3 folder, then run pbsetup again.

Challq, go to the portforward.com site as posted above and look up your particular router.

by the way, you have a PM.

Cheers

http://forums.bf2s.com/viewtopic.php?id=70938/ this is for a different game but it fixed my problems. same as yours. worked great for me.. but you have to do this everytime you change any file related to Q3. or at least i do