It was probably inadvertantly installed by my client by clicking on one of thos warning boxes that splash up in some browser windows warning you you have an infected machine- the box looks very like a windows error but its actually not.

An article in PC Pro recently was saying this type of malware is serviced by Russian Mafia types as a way to effectively extort sums from web users by installing their dodgy AV software which then watches their internet history recoding Credit card numbers etc and relaying to the ” mother ship”.

The PC was installed with F Secure 2010 AV but the damage was done probably byt he client authorising the install unwittingly. F Secure could detect the system modification attempt by a service effectively a random string name. But it could not detect the virus it seemed nor stop its troublesome attempts to scare the user.

It did a number of bad things.

1) It kept warning that it had detected an intrusion attempt- funny as when I had the machine it was not even connected to the internet- worth a test if you ever see such a warning- disconnect and see if it persists. I always disconnect any infected machines when I am awar eof them and recommend you do too.

2)It kept flagging up spurious process crashes.

3) It disabled access to services.msc- the control panel services applet and taskmgr.exe (so you could neither id or disable it by conventional means)

4) Once you opened a IE8 browser window it went mental – constant alerts resulting in many red shields inthe system tray, and sometimes a Windows AV type window saying AntiSpyware Soft – click to purchase and enable- to sort tht eproblem. of course you would be mental to. It also sent the web browser to dodgy websites like p*rno.com and vi*gra.com (and probably others) Heightening the fear factor or the client!

5) I did a bit research onthe web (as you do and the best info i found was on www.spywareremove.com) It gae free, manual removal instructions which were spot on and worked a treat. I would say – you need to use Safe Mode to do the steps listed and be happy inthe registry. I found a couple of key s that differed from their instructions but they were easy to spot and I put it down to the variable behaviour of the malware)

6) With the files deleted its back t normal, but I have installed Google Chrome on the machine as its less susceptible to some of the aspects of such malware.

Users of the Clickcart Pro/ Eurocart Pro v7 eshop application by Kryptronic Inc have the option to buy a mod (Xmod) called HDSEO or High Definition Search Engine Optimisation.

The purpose of the Xmod is to generate user friendly readable links for your urls in your shop- turning some dynamically generated url string with lot sof parameters into something that would be instantly recogniseable as a product or category for the user – or more importantly for a search engine.

There is a half way house option as standard with the shop application that generates reasonably short and identifiable links, but they are not meaningfull to search engines. Hence this tool. Whether there is any value in readable links is open to debate but on balance its probably better to have than not.

The way the system is implemented in CCP/ECPv7 is not that straightforward in my opinion especially for the user who is not terribly web /computer literate and causes a lot of problems. Even for someone with a bit of knowledge its not easy and is very very time consuming.

HDSEO is a two stage process: first you need to write your rewrite rules in Mod-rewrite syntax into a .htaccess file. This then needs to be uploaded onto the webserver into the directory that hosts the eshop.

Second you need to then tell the application about these rewritten links by adding them into the database. When the xmod is purchased a new table is written in the shop database to accomodate these links. Every time you add new products or categories to your eshop you need to update these HDSEO links. This might involve locating and editing existing links inthe database and inthe .htaccess file.

Doing this manually is very time consuming and as I sussed out how to get this working for a client I decided also to write a script to automate the process, so when the catalogue was updated the HDSEO could also be updated too. I have gone beyond this and further optimised the code and the access to the script so that it runs as a reasonably user friendly tool.

When to use the tool

Everytime you add or remove products or categories to your eshop database this tool should be run. It only takes a few moments and will ensure all your links are up to date at all times.

What does the tool do

The tool examines the database of your eshop category and product items and creates user readable links out of your name fields.

1) Stage one generates the .htaccess data, and dumps it to screen where you can either cut and paste it straight into a file called .htaccess and load to your webserver, or optionally download as a text file called htaccess.txt. You then rename this file .htaccess and load onto your webserver.

2) Stage two generates generates the MySQL commands needed to first of all delete all your old HDSEO data and then replace it with new data matching your .htaccess. You can dump the commands to screen for manual input into your database via a database admin tool like Navicat or PHPMyAdmin, or optionally you can have the tool do the updates for you – it takes a matter of seconds.

Limitations

The tool has limitations and you should be aware of them. If you beleive you would be affected by them then do not use the tool. You may wish to consider restructuring your database data before using this tool in view of the limitations.

• Unique data: It relies on your category and product name data being unique in your database. If you have identically names products or categories and products with the same names the script output will generate links with the same names. This will cause you problems as the server will use the first found item inthe .htaccess when you click on an affected link.

Structuring your data with unique names will sort this. For example: having a category called Sony TV’s and then giving each TV a name like Sony Bravia 40, Sony Bravia 48 will be far more effective than having a category called Sony TV and a product called Sony TV.

The default queries this tool uses can be adapted by you with only limited knowledge of MySQL syntax so if you know you have duplicates but still want the convenience of using this tool, you may be able to apply some filters to the sql to achieve this. Using a DISTINCT Select query will achieve this but may be too coarse an option unless you understand how this functions.

• Spaces: Spaces should not be used on urls either in files or in links. yes urlencoded spaces can be used but they are not efficient for SEO purposes. The tool allows you to substitute spaces for either the underscore, the dash or no space at all. Ensure your database and .htaccess file match in this regard!

• Eshops not in the root of a webserver/domain. The script has not been fully tested in  a non root environment- as I don’t have a shop in this configuration to try it on. If yours is, it should be OK but you are advised to proceed with caution initially. Anyone using the script like this would be asked toreport back her ein case there ar echanges I can make to cope with this if there are unforseen issues.

• Security: This tool is not integrated directly in CCP/ECP v7. It does however require access to the shop database. It does this using settings you provide to the connection script in the htaccessory.php file. When you extract the contents of this tool, they will be in a directory called “tools”. Upload this entire directory to your webserver. You should now secure this directory using an .htaccess file for this directory. Your isp/hosting provider will normally provide you with a tool in your control panel which allows you to password protect any chosen directory. You MUST do this or your HDSEO will be subject to compromise by anyone who learns of its location. You can if you so desire rename the directory from tools to anything you like. This .htaccess file is not related to the one used by  the eshop which will be located one level above the tools directory in the the file structure.

If you are especially paranoid, consider loading the tool onto and off the server whenever you need it. Your choice.

• Setting up: Once the files are securely located on your webserver you will need to edit the htaccessory.php file to contain your database connection data. Without this the script will not function. Details are included in the file. You should use a suitable text editor to achieve this. Take care opening thse files in Dreamweaver as it has a nasty habit with changing some form parameters without telling you due to the Spry /javascript used within.
• Use of these tools: The use of these tools is entirely up to you. They were developed for use in my own development work but I have decided to make them available as a service to the CCP/ECP v7 userbase as HDSEO seems to be a major bugbear for user problems. if you already have HDSEO set up and intend to use this tool going forward, MAKE BACKUPS OF BOTH YOUR HDSEO TABLE IN YOUR DATABASE, AND YOUR CURRENT .htaccess FILE.. Being able to get your shop back working if you break your links with this tool is entirely your responsibility. These scripts work perfectly in my hosting environment, they may not in yours!
• The tools come with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY INFERRED OR IMPLIED, consider this before you download the tool, download infers acceptance of this fact. I will provide support to users of the tool when I can, I am not available 24 hours a day and have other tasks to undertake.
• You are free to modify the tool as you see fit, if you do please ensure you keep the existing credits in place and notify this website of your improvements. The code is released under a GPL you may adapt or modify as you see fit but it is not for resale.

Installation

Installation is easy with basic web knowledge:

1. Extract the files to your hard drive, maintining the directory structure
2. Upload the files in their directory structure to the same directory as is used by your eshop
3. Password protect this directory using an .htaccess file
4. download the htaccessory file to your drive, open in a text editor and insert your database connection parameters where specified near the top of the file
5. If necessary you may wish to fine tune the SQL used to access your category and products data. Once done, save the file and upload to the server again
6. Server Requirements: Should be OK in any php5.x environment but has only been developed on php v5.2 so thats all I am willing to state. Feel free to try it elsewhere though
7. Your php installation must be set up with mysqli support (no longer a default option). Most New ECP/CCPv7 installations I would expect to be running mysqli.
8. You DO NOT have to run this on the server your shop inhabits. In fact you do not need a shop installation on your test server either!. If you have a copy of WAMP or Linux running a webserver locally with php v5.2 you can copy over the database tables from your shop (the ecom_cat and ecom_prod are the two main ones- the cms one is optional really). The script can be run on this database and then the output loaded to your live environment. Auto database updating might not be possible in this configuration so you may need to enter the database data via phpMyAdmin or similar.

Using the tool

Do this at a quiet time for your eshop

1. Back up your existing .htaccess file for your eshop HDSEO if any and also your database HDSEO data, so you can restore to where you came from  if this all goes wrong.
2. Access the tool by going to http://<type your domain>/tools/menu.php
3. Follow the link to the HDSEO tool.
4. Edit the parameters on the .htacccess configuration tab
5. Edit in any custom rules that you use in your existing .htaccess file
6. Choose to either display on screen (default) or download the output as a text file- first time recommended to dump to screen
7. In your browser, select all the screen contents and copy to a new .htaccess file on your hard drive. If you chose to download a file instead the file will be called htaccess.txt. Rename this to .htaccess and upload directly to your server.
8. Upload this file to the directory containing your eshop, overwrite the old one if necessary.
9. Click the back button in your browser and return to the .htaccess configuration screen.
10. Select the database configuration screen. Fill in the details required ensuring the space character matches the one you chose before.
11. The first time you run this its recommended you dump to screen and copy the data again this time applying it via a database admin tool like phpmyadmin ( hosting providers usually provide such a tool for direct database management) Note. the first command is a truncate statement- this erases all the existing data in your HDSEO table- YOU MUST remove all old data or your results will be poor at best.
12. Once you are confident of whats going on select the database update option and the tool will do all database changes automatically

I hope you find this tool useful. Please feel free to post any comments you have here, I will be happy to answer any queries when I can.

Release data:

Initial release:

v1.5
v1.5.1 (minor additions to illegal characters array that were dropped off in release build)
v1.5.2 (removed inproper access message which showed in form when loading accessory script )

Latest version:v1.5.3 : IMPORTANT CORRECTION: Corrected a small but significant error with .htaccess file creation which potentially could stop your server from loading. Ensure you upgrade to the v1.5.3 version.

tools.zip

I tried giving ht emachine a good dust out including the fan but no life was seen. You could smell burning though when it was switched on, so I pretty well gave up hope for the fan and was cursing the whole thing, as it coul dmean a complete motherboard/CPU/RAM upgrade to sort. Not a big deal technically but a pain in the backside financially when the PC is otherwise fine.

I decided to have a look see if I could fix it.

Its a bit tricky to get out and basically I needed to remove all the motherboard securing screws to get to the back of the board and the two retaining plugs that hold the fan on the chip. The only way I could see to remove them was to pull each plug out from the borad one at a time against the spring tension of the securing pillars on the front of the board, and cut them with side cutters.

This causes the retaining pillars to ping off  so watch out for losing them and the springs. Its going to be hard to resuse them but watch the springs don’t end up trapped in amongst the components onthe bard and cause further problems.

The Fan comes out once the pins are released and the power plug needs to be removed from the board.

Its held closed by 4 tiny cross head screws (a very small phillips will be required) then once the cover is off the fan is secired to the bottom of the heatsink with three further similarly sized screws.

I got these out and gave the whole assembly a really good dowse in Electrical Solvent cleaner. This certainly got it clean but it did not feel especially free spinning.

I had a wee trawl on the web and it seems this is a very common fault and the general recommendation is to replace it with a Zalman ZM-NB47J Passive cooler you can get them at micro direct here in the UK. Most appear to fail early in the life of the PC, so I guess we have been luck as this board is a few years old now.

They only cost a few pounds so I decided to order one though have to admit I have doubts its going to fit as my sons PC has a pair of NVidia  graphics cards in SLI mode that are very long and I think they are going to impede the cooler. However the cooler is rotateable so I might be able to make it fit…nothing ventured nothing gained.

Anyway I decided to have a go at getting the fan going again if I could, so after the liberal cleaning in Solvent gave it another good dose of WD40 lubricant.

I cleaned off the excess, set the motherbaord back to at least power up (plugged the atx connector in) and connected the fan – just holding it in my hand. I could feel it wanted to go – it pulsed but did not turn, so I had another wee look at it, and it seemed to be a bit squint on its axis. I applied a bit pressure to try make it look more evenly mounted, and this time it fired up.

I gave it another oil and tried again, this time it seemed much faster. So time to put it all back together, connect up and apply a bit heat paste to the chip . Now I don’t have any screw to fix the cooler back to the chipset so am kind of counting on the paste and the friction of the graphics cards above the fan holding it all in place, but the warning is gone and the fan is working fast and smoothly.

I will report on the cooler when it arrives but this might have saved things for now.

The details of this error seem to point to the F Secure Firewall I run ( the 2008 version in my case) However even disabling this failed to resolve issues (if only to debug- I strongly recommend you don’t disable security measures to enable messenger apps!)

I found various purported solutions to the problem but none worked for me.

Remove any custom themes from Vista (ie. Windowblinds) – I don’t use this so not applicable to me.

Delete the contacts directory in the Windows live folder (you can find this in Vista by going to your user profile folder (usually C:\Users\<your login name> and then ensuring you have set “show hidden folders” go to App Data\Local\Microsoft\

In here you will find a Windows Live Contacts directory- you can either delete it (or like me if your less trusting of such advice- rename it to something like Windows Live Contacts.bak)  and then try your messenger again.

This has apparently worked for many users- but alas not for me. In case you are worried the program recreates the directory if it cannot find it- like so many microsoft programs.

So you can then persevere with trying to find your own solutions- if you get it sorted be free to comment on it here, but in my case I chose to uninstall it and try to get back to an older version. These are a bit more tricky to find as any normal searches for them turn up the latest problematic one.

I found the last version ( I think its the last version 8.5.1302.1018) – it looks Ok to me – here ( be warned there are a lot of Shareware apps using the messenger name that appear when you search in Google) . While they may be harmless I have a degree of concern that other apps use similar names to confuse users and may ultimately end up with you either a paid for program you did not want or possible spyware or malware you did not ask for.

This link takes you to the 8.5 version on microsoft.com

I got hold of a utility called ShellExView from Nirsoft which allows you to see which shell extensions are running on your platform and to selectively disable them. Be warned disable them one at a time and only those you suspect. If your not sure ask a PC savvy friend!

Anyway working chronologically backwards- ie newest first I noticed an Icon Handler extension supplied by Arachnoid Biometrics Identification Group Corp. Disabling this restored the icon function onthe start button.

Unfortunately I see no easy way to uninstall this as it has no entry in the Control Panel. Looks like a manual/ registry hack job for later.

I need to look into if there is a fix for this first though. Perhaps an updated driver for the Transcend USB stick.

My workstation runs Vista Home Premium. Now really  should have Vista Business but its a long story that I am not going to go into here why I have Home premium.

I do my backups two ways, I run Sync Toy every day to an external drive and I run Windows Vista Backup to an internal drive.

Following a recent crash with my Raid array (a striped set) I went to restore my user data from a back up. I was surprised to find that none of my files with php extensions were there.

Fortunately I had the copies from by Sync Toy images so I was OK but its worth stating that unless all your interested in is the back up of “personal” files- ie images, mp3s and common file extension docs like xls or doc files you cannot rely on the back up tool for Vista to save you. Somewhat oddly it does save html files- probably due to the fact that many programs can generate html files as an output format, that are not deemed as “professional” file types.

Be warned! 

1) First issue is if you try to install it anywhere but on a c: drive expect issues. The program does not appear on the start bar, the desktop or in the games explorer in Vista (32).

All these issues can be fixed by a c: drive install.

2) Once installed, don’t expect it to run easily- you start it from the Play button fired up from the DVD menu. Then it tells you to insert a valid disc in the drive! A work round for this is to run up the menu but don’t hit play, eject the dvd and insert dvd 2 inthe drive, this seems to then work oddly. However thats not a permanent fix.

The real fix for this is to install a Vist Hot fix available from the kaos website. However you need to install the 1.0.1 vista patch first and as the game won’t load you might be stuffed as it auto updates- though see bodge round in point one. The solution is to copy down the hotfix and the 1.0.1 patch to your PC as exe’s before installing the game- do a clean install then patch it then hotfix it.

This seems to sort all these issues out.

3) Finally if you have a Nvidia graphics card you may experience the game freezing every 20 seconds or so between bursts of running smoothly. As my sons PC is base don Nvidia GT8800 in SLI mode it might be an SLI problem only- I don’t know, however the fix for this is to grabe the Nvidia beta drivers for vista from the Nvidia website version 169.28

CHARLIE DON’T SURF

The TV station: When you get into the TV station figth your way through to the technical area, and enter into the main office. You only have a few seconds before the enemy arrives so turn immediately right and run right up the side to the end of the aisle, there is a cupboard with an open door- go in.

You can now fight from this angle, taking out the RPG on the balcony and numerous other enemies, you will be grenaded frequently but just keep lobbing them back. Eventually the shooting will quieten down and you can exit to take out the remaining bad guys. The rest is easy.

THE BOG

You can get pretty stuck here, however I played this different on Vet than I did on Regular, where from the wall I went left to the buildings and fought through to the AA gun. In vet, in the dark head to the wrecked car near the entry point and then over the berm on the right- edge your way along, shooting any obvious targets util you can see the AA gun behind the house. Shoot until you kill the gunner. Its quieter now so you will find locating and killing the bad guys dead easy and you can destroy the gun. The rest is pretty much as on easler settings.

ONE SHOT ONE KILL

The fair ground: Getting to the exfil point is hard but not impossible, however waiting for and then extracting to the Chinook is tough. Before droppin goff the injured officed at th epoint he asks you to, put him down and run round and put claymores round the perimeter of the ferris wheel area. Go move the officer to the location asked and he should give you more clays. Lay these round the dodgems on the right. Now go behind the dodgems and wait for the bad guys to arrive, make sur eyou have an automatic rifle of some sort as well as the sniper rifle.

Again grenades will come thick and fast keep lobbing them back, and you will get through. When the chopper arrives run for the officer- there are at least two bad guys who appear from the grass to get you – shoot them as you run . Once you have the officer, you need to be pretty unlucky to die so head straight for the chopper. This I reckon is the second hardest level in the game.

HEAT

This is a tough level on any difficulty, but like a lot in COD4, approach it latterly and sometimes a better way emerges.

At the farm where you have to hit the tanks with the Javelin, deal with the tanks then hea dover to the hut on the right. Enemies approach through the field in to the hut. Kill as many as you can and get out the door intot he field on the right- keep as far over right as you can. Call in an air strike on the main field to the front to let your team advance. At the back of the house, you will reach take out the enemies, and start calling in strikes , bring one in just below your position to hol doff nearby enemies then start bringing them in a down the hill to the left- you can call in multiple strikes. Strike heading down behind the wrecked cars over the road and all the time hitting the houses further down the hill. The secret is to keep going, time is against you but you will get check points if you go quickly, Near th chopper use a last strike then run for it, its actually quite easy when you get it right.

ALL IN

Entering the silo complex.

There are two easy routes in this level, the first, after meeting up with the snipers outside the base- head left away from where the battle is going on and where you can see the tanks. Follow the fence round left to find a pick up truck and a wall with a flashing C4 symbol on. Blow the wall after retreating tot he pick up- getting an RPG from the back. You can shoot the BMPs out from the pick up- much easier than C4′ing them.

Fight through to the inner compound where the Captian blows the fence. you are supposed to C4 the next two tanks or RPG them but finding RPGs is hard. Easier is to go back inside the outer compound and locate the building over looking the inner compound, near the rear of the gatehouse. head onto the roof, you will find a Javelin launcher- its easy from here!

NO FIGHTING IN THE WAR ROOM

This level is mental hard. Speed is everything, as you won’t get the checkpoints unless you are fast.

Drop through from vents and turn right into right corridor. Shoot the enemies ahead and flash the entry on the right. Head forward and watch for the bad guy coming fromt he kitchen store ahead- head through behind the kitchens. Shoot through the serving counters and grenade until shooting dies down. Head through for first check point at glass wall.

Round wall into corridor there are bad guys in the dark- be quick to shppt them out moving forward to a store room wher eit gets a bit messy but a grenade or two clears them out shooting the rest. Now your top of the stairs withthe big star, head down. As long as you are at no less than 7:20 you will checkpoint.

Reload, and flashbang right up the middle, two bad guys appear- ignore them and run as fast as you can- dodging side to side, wath on the right for a cut in with missiles in racks head in ther eand right again behind the crate. Start shooting at youre 11 o’clock taking out everyone that appears- at least four bad guys. Dodge out and take out a bad guy on the opposite side of the crate accross the corridor, if you don’t he will get you. The capt should have passed by now, throw a grenade to the 11 p’clock and as soon as it goes off run forward to the space beyond. Shoot any strays, and then run for the corridor right ahead , at this point sometimes you make it sometimes not, there are 2 bad giys in the corridor you need to run and shoot them. If you make it you will check point at about 6:20.

This bit is really hard- make sure you have the SOPFOR  and a shot gun, run forward reloading, Shoot into the corridor where the bad guy runs, whne he reappears on the right, take out a further 2 who appear on the left, there are two bodies behind you at the wall- collect more flash bangs while taking cover behind crates and reloading, the team will have caught up by now. Flash bang into the corridor and run forward tot eh right sid eof the blockade, ther eis a cut in, start taking out all the bad guys down the central corridor, use no grenades, shoot everyone all the way down. Now reload and prep ‘nade launcher. Come back to the cross roads of the first two silos. Stay the blockade side of the tunnels and grenade launch down the left hand tunnel (left coming from the way in- you can see down it if your careful) Fire twince ensuring you got the two bad guys int he silo. Now turn and fire down the other side , once ies enough if you did it right, run forward, about 3/4 way down a bad guy appears on left in thte silo- make sure you get him before he gets behind missile.

Run forward and flash into the next tunnel, then shoot any stunned bad guys, if you are fast there will be a near by guy and one at the far end, try shooting them both, swap to launcher and fire a grenade either side of the missile at the back. Ready the rifle again and edge forward, there is usually one guy who jumps out.

As you ente rthe second silo do the same again, flash shoot then from behind missile fire your launcher all the way up the tunnel, if your working fast, don’t get to oworried about time, allow yourself to recover from any injuries before exposing yourself to more fire. You will be about out of nades for the launcher by now so be ready to shoot any of the two or three remaining guys at the end of the tunnel. As soon as you do run forward, and the team will reappear as if by magic (great help they were) and you will get tot he door with about 2 mins 40 on the clock, two more checkpoints will be given. The rest is dead easy you just need to wait on the door opening, kill about 5 bad guys inside the room and blow the hole in the wall. I stopped the missiles with about 20 seconds spare.

My original plan was to load the game on to my sons PC- this is much higher spec than mine- and less critical should anything bad happen. This I did and the Single player game run beautifully- looks glorious with the high spec Graphics (Twin Nvidia 8800GTS’s in SLi mode).

However Multiplayer was dire- ping was at lowest over 100ms and often more so no good. This is because his machine is on a wireless bridge. It doe snot seem to affect a lot of games but COD4 was unplayable. On the few times I got it going though I was getting kicked around 60 seconds in by Punkbuster. The error was initially indicating PunkBuster was not responding to the server.

I did a bit googling and found out that there are many and various issues here.

First Firewall: If you run one- and you probably should then you need to ensure UDP port 28962 is open both ways. If you can’t do this as you don’t understand firewalls, you don’t have the rights or whatever- the only thing I can suggest is (assuming you can) disable any firewall to all traffic while playing COD4 online. On my machine I run FSecure 2007 and I had to set up a specific service rule for Punkbuster- allow all networks bothways, All IP addresses UDP Port 28962 in and out.

Next having sorted this the reachability kicks stopped and the Restriction Service Communications Failure: PnkBstrB.exe initialisation failed errors started.

I would love to say I totally got tot he bottom of this but probably haven’t- however I do have it working.

First of version control: the version that comes with COD4 is well out of date, its meant to update automatically when online, but then if your having network problems your going to be stuffed there I reckon. You can go to the Evenbalance website and download PBSVC to install the service properly (you need to be running this as admin in Vista- right click the icon and select run as admin).

Next there is an updater which ensures you have the right versions for your game. You can download PBSETUP here. Its worth running this even if you think your installed OK because it runs through a test that dumps to your screen and lets you see any obvious issues.

Run this , select COD4 and let it do its thing- takes about 60 seconds to complete. You could if you like now try your game but I suspect you will be unsuccessful.

You probably are not aware (or maybe you are- so why read this!) but when PunkBuster installs the executables for the services reside in C:\windows\system32 (PnkBstrA.exe and PnkBstrB.exe). The former appears to be a resident service that runs all the time in your machine once its installed. The latter is initalised by the game, which in turn is detected by the former- ie, A detects the game is starting and kicks B into life. You can see PnkBstrA running as a service if you go into Control Panel/Admin tools/Services and list them alphabetically- it should be running. If its not investigate why- check the properties and ensure its running with high enough privileges, it needs admin rights. If it snot use the “log in as” tab and set it to run under an admin account.

Also there are potentially compatibility issues. You can try these- I did on the way to getting things working but have since turned them off. Righclick on your icon for COD4 Multiplayer and in the properties option, select the Compatibility Windows XP service Pack 2 Option. Also select Run as administrator in the check box at the bottom.

Do the same for PnkBstrA and PnkBstrB in your windows\system32 directory. Now as I say I have since turned off the Windows XP setting but you DO need to leave the run as admin in place. According to the Punkbuster FAQ at Evenbalance.com this is not necessary. Well I would dispute this as if I set mine back to run normally I get the error back within 60 seconds of starting a game.

Its worth playing around with these settings but just change one thing at a time to ensure you know whats having an affect.

Another factor in the problem I discovered is that in C:\windows\system32\logfiles\PunkBuster there are service logs- for the kernel, and services a and b. I found when i was getting the init error the logs were populated with the following:

[01.12.2008 21:50:34] ERROR: File “C:\Program Files\Activision\Call of Duty 4 – Modern Warfare\pb\PnkBstrB.exe” does not exist.

[01.12.2008 21:50:34] ERROR: C:\Program Files\Activision\Call of Duty 4 – Modern Warfare\pb\PnkBstrB.exe does not contain a valid certificate; Load denied.
[01.12.2008 21:50:39] ERROR: Ignoring load request coming within a few seconds of prior load

The first error seems to suggest a missing file in the COD game – and indeed it did not exist but how it gets there looks to be down to the game running under admin privs. Its not as far as I can tell just a matter of copying the file there are there appear to be other files spawned here too. Again- don’t be afraid to try at worst you can delete them again! The second error appears to indicate a security issue. You can see the certificates associated withthe programs in the Security tab in the file properties- both seem OK, again it appears to be an admin rights thing.

Having tried this the game appears to run OK, however on my first session of about 30 minutes I suffered a total hang of my PC which takes me back to my opening lines that I probably should not run this on this PC, as I ended up having to hard reset it. This is the first total hang/crash I have had under Vista I have to say. Tomorrow, armed with this info I am going to tackle my sons machine again so at least it does not get the Punk Buster Issues, the high ping will be solved when I get some Ethernet over Mains adapters this week.

Hopefully this helps someone else in a similar situation.