Half-Life and Punkbuster woes

[ThriKreen]

Whenever I run HalfLife to play Counter-Strike, and also run Punkbuster to i.d. myself to the game server that I'm not using any cheats, after about 5min into the game, my screen freezes requiring me to hardboot my computer. This is with HalfLife using OpenGL, when I use Direct3D, I don't get such a crash, nor does it crash if I just run HL without PB.

I suspect that when PB does it's cheat detection and tries to access the opengl32.dll file, to verify I'm not using a hacked DLL to enable cheating, somehow it causes some memory corruption and causes the system to crash.

Anyone else have this problem? I really dislike D3D for HL because I have to run in 800x600 instead of my usual 1024x768, and it slows down a LOT and generally looks crappy compared to OpenGL. =)

System specs:
Windows 2000 Prof.
dual P3-800 on a P2B-D
512mb pc133 ECC ram
Matrox G400Max w/RR-G

I never had this problem before I reinstalled W2K, but I don't know if that's the case, since I also had updated drivers for everything.

[DukeP]

This should not be a problem..
I had no problem running PB on a G400max under win2k.

I think the freezes U are experiencing are the "normal" freezes experienced with all matrox opengl drivers. Check this forum for others with same problem.. I am afraid that not easy solutions will present themselves.



~~DukeP~~

[Kruzin]

Originally posted by DukeP
I think the freezes U are experiencing are the "normal" freezes experienced with all matrox opengl drivers.

There is no "normal" OGL freezes that I have experienced. I have played on evey build of TFC, and 20x the number of Matrox driver builds that most people have, and have not had any lockup problems. I can play TFC in OGL mode for hours on end with no problems. Usually, the problem can be traced to a configuration issue, not a driver problem.

I don't know about this punkbuster thing...never tried it myself. Does the game run OK without PB running? I was not aware that PB was even supported with HL/TFC.

A complete system configuration, including IRQ assignments would be helpful in tracking down the prob...

[ThriKreen]

That's the thing, I *KNOW* it's related to PunkBuster.

When playing Halflife in OpenGL mode without PunkBuster running, I can play for hours. The minute I run PunkBuster, within 5-10min (the usual duration before PB does a check of various files), it'll freeze, sometimes with garbage on the screen. It's not random freezes, but always withint 5-10min... I've never seen a PB auth message for me, since it crashes the computer before that happens.

PunkBuster only supports HL and all it's various mods, and what it does is checks various files and running processes on your computer to see if any are known cheats/hacks (see through walls, aimbots, speed cheats, etc). I suspect when it does a check of my opengl32.dll, since w2k is already accessing it, it barfs. And like I mentioned, it's weird since before I reinstalled W2K it was running fine in OGL mode. But W2K wasn't in ACPI mode before the reinstall however...

I could try running HL and PB and minimize HL and see if any messages pop up on PB... hmm...

[DukeP]

Hmm.. I have always had all sorts of troubles with the various OGl drivers for my G400max. Eventually I deemed it playable, but It still frooze from time to time.. Its NOT helping that Im used a Sblaster live card. But it IS the G400max thats causing the troubles.

PB did, however not cause ME any troubles.. I used it quite a bit, since I played on some of the "ladder" clan sites. No troubles with PB tho.

I used a CUSL2 with 512mb and a PIII at 800MHz, a Sblive 5.1 and win2000.

I have now graduated to a gfarce400mx and Im using winxp. NO crashes in any games, be that dx or gl.

Still missing my G400 on occasions, but I will hold my breath for their next creation.
Good luck getting over the PB freezes and such.

~~DukeP~~

[Wombat]

I wonder if it's an SMP problem. Can you try running the machine in uniprocessor mode?

[Grail]

I just got through fixing a similar problem

How are you connecting to the internet ThriKreen? Cable/DSL through a NIC? If you are, your crashes could be linked to your NIC.
I would constantly crash whenever playing any 3D game and was almost immediately. It didn't matter if I had used PB or not. I had to switch my 3COM card with my roommate for a second D-Link 530TX+ NIC's to get to play CS.
Mind you, I still did have the occasional problem before I had 2 NIC's installed. I friend at work told me to take out my 3COM and all my problems disappeared... In my case at least, the 3COM seemed to have taken a lot of the PCI Bus bandwidth for itself.

[Edit] BTW, I am running Win2K w/ SP2 installed and never used the 3COM "value added" software.

[ThriKreen]

Nope, again, I KNOW it has to deal with PunkBuster. Without it running, I can play Half-Life: CounterStrike in OpenGL mode online for hours and hours and hours, the minute I run PB and connect to a PB required server, it crashes.

If I don't connect to a PB required server, but have PB running, and start up a local game in OpenGL mode, PB doesn't check the files, and the system stays up.

It has something to do when PB does a check of various files for known cheats.

Unfortunately the servers I play on nowadays are PB required to get rid of a majority of the cheaters. =(

[JamesA]

PB may not be SMP aware/safe

Originally posted by Wombat
I wonder if it's an SMP problem. Can you try running the machine in uniprocessor mode?

<b>Wombat</b> may be right there. PunkBuster, G400 drivers or HL are not SMP safe/aware. One of them has OpenGL.dll opened and locked, and the other while running on another CPU may be trying to access a locked resource (the DLL) and hence causing an access violation?

Hey, I am just guessing here... I am really just an idiot.

[ahartman]

Have you followed up with Tony Ray or anyone else on the PB staff? In my experience, they've been tremendously helpful in working out problems, even with individual users.

http://www.punkbuster.com

They have forums.

[Wombat]

Maybe he doesn't like my idea. He didn't even comment on trying it.

[ThriKreen]

Sorry, took out one CPU and um... got a 'little' caught up kicking people's butts in CounterStrike. =)

So in uniprocessor it doesn't crash with OpenGL and PB, I'm gonna plug in the other CPU and see about setting the CPU affinity for both HL and PB to the same CPU and see if that does anything.

I did send an email once to the PB staff but never got a response, but with this new info I'm going to try again.

Thanks guys!

[ThriKreen]

w00t, setting the CPU affinity to CPU 0 for both PB and HL seems to do the trick, now to figure out how to use some utility to force the CPU affinity automatically without having to taskswitch out of HL all the time.

[Six Of One]

Hey ho, same prob here, but...

I posted here some time ago but somehow nothing helpfull came along. Well, my problem is almost the same.

When running HL in OpenGL it crashes within a few minutes. PB running or not. No such prob in DirextX.

I'm using Win98SE with latest drivers for all my hardware. Except the SB. There seems to be no more recent driver than the 2.4 version from August 2000. See list below for IRQ and stuff.

0 Systemzeitgeber
1 Standard (101/102 Tasten) oder Microsoft Natural Keyboard
2 Programmierbarer Interrupt-Controller
3 COM-Anschluss (COM2)
4 COM-Anschluss (COM1)
5 (frei)
6 Standard-Diskettenlaufwerk-Controller
7 ECP-Druckeranschluss (LPT1)
8 CMOS-/Echtzeitsystemuhr
9 Creative Sound Blaster PCI128
9 IRQ-Holder für PCI-Steuerung
10 Matrox Millennium G400 - Deutsch
10 IRQ-Holder für PCI-Steuerung
11 Realtek RTL8029 PCI Ethernet NIC
11 IRQ-Holder für PCI-Steuerung
12 PS/2-kompatibler Mausanschluss
13 Numerischer Coprozessor
14 Primary IDE controller (dual fifo)
14 VIA Bus Master PCI IDE Controller
15 Secondary IDE controller (dual fifo)
15 VIA Bus Master PCI IDE Controller

[Jon P. Inghram]

Ah, I see your problem. A virus has attacked your computer and damaged everything attached to it. You can tell because the IRQ list is illegable.

Do you have the latest patches/bios for the G400 and mobo?