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UGH.  I went through tons of this headaches back on Battlefield 2 with Punkbuster, and now it appears to have come up again on BF3.  I had been playing along for months without a single issue, but then re-installed recently when I reconfigured my machine. Then I started getting this dreaded message:

Game disconnected: you were kicked by PunkBuster. Stated reason: PunkBuster kicked player  (for 0 minutes) … RESTRICTION: Service Communication Failure: PnkBstrA.exe

The forums are full of people with this same issue.  Here are some solutions that pertained to my particular problem:

1. Punkbuster didn’t even get installed.  You need to go to Punkbuster’s website, download the installer, and install it yourself.  Go here and follow the directions:
   http://www.evenbalance.com/index.php?page=dl-bf3.php
2. Punkbuster isn’t getting updated automatically.  There are HTML ‘key’ files that need to be installed and updated regularly.   You need to select 7 different links and save them in the correct folders.
   1. The first is: pbsec.htm, it goes in C:\Program Files (x86)\Origin Games\Battlefield 3\.  Be careful!  When I first saved it from the link, it saved it as pbsec-1.html – that doesn’t work.
   2. Update the remaining 6 htm files like ‘PB Client v2.317 for Win32’ et al. go into C:\Program Files (x86)\Origin Games\Battlefield 3\pb\htm
3. pbsvc.exe is missing(!).  One post mentioned that you could manually run C:\Program Files (x86)\Origin Games\Battlefield 3\pbsvc.exe and it would test everything for you.  I actually found this file was missing.  However, a copy of it was there in C:\Program Files (x86)\Origin Games\Battlefield 3\__Installer\punkbuster\redist\pbsvc.exe.  I copied it to the root BF3 directory and then everything worked.

Thanks again Origin for really making PC gaming a viable environment and reminding me why consoles have eaten half your gaming lunch.

 

 

Oh – yet another way in which Microsoft has made my, and others’, lives much more easy.

Problem:
You open Windows Media Player, and try to rip a CD, but it won’t rip despite the fact you’ve done this dozens of times before.  You get the message ‘Windows Media Player cannot rip one or more tracks from this CD’.

You open Tools->Options->Rip Music.  You see that the ‘Rip music to this location’ is blank – so you click ‘Change’ to set it.  But nothing happens.  Click, click, click.  No dialog opens to allow you  to set the output directory.  Any time you try to rip the CD, you get the same error saying it can’t rip.  You try running the Troubleshooting app and reset all the user settings to default.  Still no luck.

Solution:
The problem is caused because the drive and/or directory media player had been pointing to no longer exists, and the change directory button doesn’t work IF THE ORIGINAL DIRECTORY OR DRIVE IS GONE.  Too bad you can’t change where it is pointing at.  Too bad you also can’t even see what it THINKS it should be pointing at to recreate it.  Guess you’ll just have to remember the path from memory.  Shucks – that’s great design.

You either have to re-create that directory (from memory) – or do THIS highly intuitive operation to fix it:

1. Start menu -> right click ‘Music’ and get the properties.

2. Either: see what directory has a checkmark by it and re-create that directory/re-attach the drive, or add/pick a listed directory that DOES exist – (i.e c:users”your user”)

3. Right click on a directory that does exist, and select  ‘Set as default save location’

Close and reopen media player.  This will solve the problem.  The fact that clicking on the ‘Change’ button doesn’t work is just fundamentally broke.  That needs fixing.  Also, fix the automated troubleshooter to actually reset the default location back to something sane too. The troubleshooter is broken as well.

Sigh.

After 5+ years of using these continually award-winning $120 headphones, the covering on the ear pads we’re starting to flake off and leave little black flakes around.  A common problem.  At under $7/each – and designed for easy replacement – getting replacement earpads was considerably cheaper than getting a new set of headphones.  Finding replacement pads, however, was somewhat difficult.  People had 3rd party pads, but the last replacement set I bought previously didn’t last much more than a year.  I went to Sony’s store, but didn’t have much luck finding them on their parts site.  Anyway, jumped on chat and got the skinny:

https://servicesales.sel.sony.com/ecom/accessories/web/productSearch.do
Once you’re there, please choose any of the items below (remote, adapter, etc). Then it will lead you to a new page and on the upper right hand there is a search box in which you can enter a search by part number.  Enter the part number and on the drop down menu, please choose “part number”.

Sony part number: 211566803
MDR-V6 headphone replacement ear pads – 211566803

They’ll show up as super-generic: PAD, EAR, but should be what you need.  Or at least I hope, since I just ordered them. 🙂

Lord I love things that make sense.

If you’re experiencing Skype crashing after about 5 seconds of audio, then try this:  It worked for me.

Find and delete the shared.xml file in the Skype data folder located here:
C:Users%username%AppDataRoamingSkype

How that does ANYTHING is beyond me, but it did work.

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 on my PC was causing me MAJOR grief.  I’d get into a game, and about 5 minutes in, I’d get dropped and ‘connection to EA server lost’ message.  UTTERLY annoying.  Appears tons of other people have the same problems.  Various solutions from turning firewalls off/etc – but that didn’t work for me.

Changing your router’s UDP and TCP endpoint filtering to “Endpoint Independent” certainly helped – but it would still drop after about 10 minutes.

What seems to have worked is this.  Go to your steam client and:

Steam Library -> rightclick BC2 -> properties -> Set launch options… -> “-pingInterval 50000”
Paste the “-pingInterval 50000” phrase without the quotation marks and that’s it.

That seems to have solved the problem for me; but this was pretty much utter fail on EA/Dice’s part. The amount of hate-forum mail that’s gone on for over 2 years relating to this problem is amazing.

So, when playing the AIX mod for Battlefield 2, I kept getting kicked after about 2-3 minutes of play when punkbuster(!) complained that:

PnkBsrtrB.exe handshaking failed ; PnkBsrtrB.exe heartbeats stopped ; PB init failure ; Packet loss

The basic problem boiled down to the fact that when Punkbuster installed, it created the outgoing rules in windows firewall, but it did not create the INCOMING rules.  I simply added incoming rules for:

c:windowssysWOW32PnkBsrtrA.exe
c:windowssysWOW32PnkBsrtrB.exe

And set them to ‘allow’.  That turns out to fix the problem.

I still can’t believe how horrible the solutions to prevent cheating were back in the day.

I recently started getting blue-screens with stdriver64.sys. In doing my blue-screen debug, very little useful information was given:


SYSTEM_THREAD_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED (7e)
This is a very common bugcheck.  Usually the exception address pinpoints
the driver/function that caused the problem.  Always note this address
as well as the link date of the driver/image that contains this address.
Arguments:
Arg1: ffffffffc0000005, The exception code that was not handled
Arg2: fffff8800970bbe8, The address that the exception occurred at
Arg3: fffff8800676d7f8, Exception Record Address
Arg4: fffff8800676d050, Context Record Address

Debugging Details:
------------------

EXCEPTION_CODE: (NTSTATUS) 0xc0000005 - The instruction at 0x%08lx referenced memory at 0x%08lx. The memory could not be %s.

FAULTING_IP:
stdriver64+1be8
fffff880`0970bbe8 49              dec     ecx

EXCEPTION_RECORD:  fffff8800676d7f8 -- (.exr 0xfffff8800676d7f8)
ExceptionAddress: 0000000000000000
ExceptionCode: c0000005 (Access violation)
ExceptionFlags: 00000000
NumberParameters: 158383080
Parameter[0]: fffffffffffff880
Parameter[1]: 0000000000000002
Parameter[2]: 0000000000000000
Parameter[3]: 0000000000000000
Parameter[4]: 0000000000000000
Parameter[5]: 000000000022dba8
Parameter[6]: 0000000000000000
Parameter[7]: 0000000000000000
Parameter[8]: 0000000000000000
Parameter[9]: 0000000000000018
Parameter[10]: 0000000000000000
Parameter[11]: ffffffffffffffff
Parameter[12]: 000000000000007f
Parameter[13]: 0000000000000000
Parameter[14]: 0000000000000000
Attempt to execute non-executable address 0000000000000002

CONTEXT:  fffff8800676d050 -- (.cxr 0xfffff8800676d050)
Unable to read context, NTSTATUS 0xC0000147

DEFAULT_BUCKET_ID:  VISTA_DRIVER_FAULT

BUGCHECK_STR:  0x7E

CURRENT_IRQL:  0

LAST_CONTROL_TRANSFER:  from 0000000000000000 to 0000000000000000

STACK_TEXT:
00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 0x0

STACK_COMMAND:  .bugcheck ; kb

FOLLOWUP_IP:
stdriver64+1be8
fffff880`0970bbe8 49              dec     ecx

SYMBOL_NAME:  stdriver64+1be8
FOLLOWUP_NAME:  MachineOwner
MODULE_NAME: Unknown_Module
IMAGE_NAME:  Unknown_Image
DEBUG_FLR_IMAGE_TIMESTAMP:  0

BUCKET_ID:  INVALID_KERNEL_CONTEXT


I dug around on my support forums, and exception 7E has been related to loads of different problems: bad logitech mice drivers, cardbus adapters, audio drivers, failed USB drivers when it happens on awake from hibernate, etc.  Basically, any and all services seem to be known to cause it.  Also, having the module and image names completely unknown wasn’t very hopeful either.  I considered the idea of stepping into the memory location specificed until I found this write-up.  It mentions the program SoundTap as a very common source.  I had recently got Soundtap as part of a kit including the excellent Switch sound converter.  I uninstalled Sound Tap and sure enough – bluescreens went away.  Soundtap installs an audio driver to divert playback so you can do raw rips of anything you play on your pc (think sound ripper for youtube/shoutcast streams/shockwave players/etc).

So, it’s always a good idea to keep track of what you’ve changed on your pc and suspect even the unlikely things such as a simple software install.  That and googling for others with the same problems. 🙂

Well, just shy of 2 years, the battery in my iPhone 3GS had gotten pretty sad.  While it would charge up to 100%, it would run down really fast.  I wasn’t able to get more than half a day of good use out of it before it needed recharging.  Even sitting on my desk at work doing nothing it would lose 20% in an 8 hour stretch and seem to be getting worse every day.

Call up an Apple store, and ask them.  Battery replacement on a iPhone 3GS?  $199.  Really?  $199 sir.  Hangup.  I look around on the internet.  Lots of folks selling iPhone batteries, and most for $5-$15.  I start looking around for the most reputable guys, and find iFixIt.com.  They have lots of great step-by-step diagrams, descriptions, videos, and pictures.   Even better, they have a comments section that has literally hundreds of folks who put tips/gotchas/etc. This is looking good.

They sell a 3GS battery kit with all the tools you need for $15 – which includes a tiny screwdriver and a small plastic pry tool that they claim is the same one made for Apple.  You can also buy other helpful tools like a suction cup for removing the 3GS screen.  I decide to take the risk and have it all shipped – $25 total.

Kit comes in the mail and looks pretty well packaged and has all the tools I need.  I open it up and go to the website for instructions.

I follow the instructions pretty closely.  This isn’t like swapping the battery in your remote.  Mine has 16 different steps with no less than the removal of 10 different tiny screws and 7 different tiny ribbon cables.  You need to remove the screen, logic board, camera, and …well… basically everything because the battery is on the very bottom *glued* to the back plastic panel.  I remove it all, install the new battery, and reverse the 16 steps.

I flip it on, *blip!* it makes the normal startup sound – the screen backlights – but NO image/icons/etc.  🙁 I plug it into my computer and it syncs and sees the phone just fine.  I can even see my pictures and music on it – but no image.  I take it apart 2 more times and try re-seating the 3 display cables.  Same result.  Ugh.  I go to check iFixIt.com’s forums, but the site is now down for maintenance – right in the middle!  I remember from a previous look on the forum where one guy had to restore the factory defaults to fix a problem with his phone not charging properly.  I figured what the heck and tell iTunes to restore to factory defaults.   Turns out there was an update due, so it took 30 minutes to download the patch and another 15-20 to restore the defaults.  Shesh.  But right after the restore of factory defaults – I get my display back!  WOOT!  I restore everything, then make a phone call – works like a champ!

I make a phone call, test the buttons, test the camera/screen/music/etc, and everything seems to work great.  Why a software reset is needed to have your display come back after a simple battery replacement is beyond me – but there it is.

So, I don’t recommend the procedure to everyone.  It took about 30 minutes of steady concentration and a equally steady hands – but it seems to be working like a total champ.  It just finished charging to 100%, so we’ll see how well this battery lasts, but it already seems much better.

Yeah, so you automatically got the newest driver for your Canoscan when upgrading to Windows 7.  However, when you go into Photoshop CS5, you no longer see TWAIN devices listed(!).  Unfortunately, in Adobe’s infinite wisdom, they have discontinued installing TWAIN support by default.  You need to go here:

http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=4688

to download the ‘Photoshop CS5 Optional Plugins’ free download.

Edit: Note – this ONLY works with 32-bit version of Photoshop CS5.  There still is no TWAIN support on 64-bit Photoshop.

Unzip the file, then copy Twain_32.8BA from the zip’s
\PSCS5OptionalPlugins_Win_en_US\Optional Plug-Ins\Win32

directory, and copy it into your Photoshop CS5 32-bit plugins folder:

C:Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS5\Plug-ins\
directory.  Restart Photoshop and you should see your TWAIN capture option again.

Did you take advantage of the super Steam holiday sales?  I did, and got the complete Battlefield 2 pack for $4.99.  However, if you installed it and got it all working – you might keep getting kicked out of network games because PunkBuster reports that you have an ‘Invalid driver version/game’.  This is because of the Steam Community overlays.

1. At your game library list in Steam, just right-click the Battlefield 2 icon
2. Select Properties
3. Go to the General tab
4. UN-select the ‘Enable Steam Community In-Game’ option.
5. Voila

Yes, annoying.  Can’t believe old games like this haven’t been re-modified by steam to not need the now-ancient PunkBuster system.  The fact they’ve had to update PunkBuster to be separate Windows Services now in order to work shows you it’s time to see that stuff go.