BF2 and punkbuster - please read!

okay i've been playng bf2 on this laptop for like a month now with perfect results. up until about last week that is.... all of a sudden whenever i get into a game and start playing i'll be fine for anyone between 5-10 minutes and then my desktop will come up and a box that says that punkbuster is closing or whatever... then i can open the bf2 at the bottom of the screen and it'll keep cutting back out into the desktop - then eventually it will just kick me out of the game and tell me that punkbuster stopped working or whatever... iknow this is a common problem because i have seen posts on this but is there a way i can fix this easily? i use windows vista premium and i run it in admin mode with compatibility on sp2 xp ... i just dont understand why i never had a problem up until like a week ago when i loaded up the game.. is there some update for punkbuster or something? what can i do to make punkbuster work now i hate when things work perfect and then a few weeks later it starts acting up for no reason .. can someone PLEASE point me in the right direction to get this game to work.. i would appreciate it greatly

 

Is Punkbuster updated to the latest version?

 

Hm..you can try updating punkbuster.

It doesn't automatically update itself so if the BF2 server's updated their PB people with older versions get disconnected.

 

Have you tried uninstalling and reinstalling? It helped me.

 

how would i go about updating punkbuster?

 

is that punkbuster link on here what i should follow? i just read it and i am a bit confused - basically do i download it, and move all the files to the bf2 directory and run the pbsetup? can someone give me a lil advice.. +rep is would definitely be granted, i am desperate here!

 

Just download the program, select your game and let it do it's magic, pretty straight-forward, you've pretty much been spoon-fed.

 

do i need to run the pbsetup in the bf2 directory. when i download the app where do i put it

 

okay i believe i did the update correctly because everything seemed to go good - but the exact same thing is happneing - says that windows looking for a solution to the problem... can anyone give me directions to the next step i appreciate the helpp thankss you!!!

 

Funny thing has started to happen right here too. Do you have a firewall and is it blocking punkbuster? For some reason as of a week or two ago punkbuster has been trying to "phone home" multiple times after being done with playing bf2. ZoneAlarm catches it saying that punkbuster.exe (or something like that) is trying to access the internet. I just hit deny. Why would it have to "phone home" when I'm 1/2 done with playing bf2? During bf2 it once kicked me out of the game because a ZoneAlarm bubble came up asking if punkbuster.exe could access the internet. It has never done this before, first time in two years. I just hit accept and kept on playing

 

Can you give the exact error message. Punkbuster was recently changed to have a couple more programs running (PBa and PBb, and also PBk). Check out this website and search your error, it worked for me! http://bf2.totalgamingnetwork.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=73

 

no go...
the exact error message is -->
pnkbstrB.exe stopped working and was closed.

then in the game if i open it back up and its still running it says service communication failure, pnkbstrb.exe heartbeats stopped..

i installed the pbsvc think and manually uninstalled and reinstalled....

 

anyone else have any suggestions for me? i noticed that inside of my program list there is a program called "punkbuster services" that i never noticed before...

please someone help me get back on the battlefield!

 

Type services into run. Then go to pnkbstrB.exe and click properties on it and enable it.

 

im using vista... where would "run" be at?

 

you can just push the "windows key [and] r" and it'll bring up the run dialog box

 

well i tried the services thing and when i looked it says that pnkbusterA is running while B is "stopped" ... which is because it stops during the game and boots me im guessing...

don't know what to do now

 

Double click on it and push "start". You should then also change "startup type" to "automatic" if it's not already set to automatic.

 

alright well it appears that punkbusterB or whatever just closes for some reason while in game and that is causing me to get booted... i dont know how to keep it from closing, i never had this problem before... when i look at the services it says both A and B are "running" after i start the game up. there was only one time when B said it was "stopped" ... but now they are both running so im back to square one

 

okay so when i reboot the system both punkbusters will be "running" ... then i play the game and when i join a server, within 1 minute i will be brought to the desktop with it saying that "punkbuster B" has been closed which then causes me to be kicked from the server and for a moment appears on the services as "stopped" ... when i leave the game and look at what is running in services however both A and B are once again "running"

how do i get punkbuster B to not "stop working" during gameplay?
i just dont understand this at all

 

Strange. Perhaps reinstalling BF2 and then updating punkbuster would help. I'm not sure. Sorry