Project Reality Forums

well im having the same problem as you killroy. Im getting the exact same mismatch,but with my lack of comp. knowledge i am royally screwed. I am trying to get a buddy started on his new comp. I know that all was downloaded and installed correctly so where i go from here i dont know. For the guy who says its our computers and not the mod or pb, well i dont think that you thought that statement out too well. There has got to be something trigering this kick. Its not that we all have faulty computers. Hense, why would we all be having the same problem. Especially the players who were playing just fine for months and now cant. You think they have monsters in their computer? I know the Devs put alot into this mod and I love the game, but the lack of response or concern to this thread is sad.

Imagine how big the PR community could be if it were not so buggy. Oh well, Im glad my comp works PR fine, just wish it was that easy for everybody. Im affraid I wont beable to help my budy out any farther, its just one problem after another. This is a joke!!

Im getting the same exact problem...

ok guys here is what i did and your not gonna believe it. After hours of reading through the forums and also talking to jaymz nothing worked. So i started screwing arround and this is what i did and it worked great. I deleted the shaders folder in mods/bf2 and replaced it with a COPY of both the night shaders and regular shaders files in the mods/pr folder. then I go into c rogam files/ EA games/bf2 and I manually start vanilla bf2, then i go to my favorites and click on a pr server and walla pr starts up and i have no shaders warning and i dont get kicked by PB fot the md5 mismatch thing. Granted if you didnt already have pr going then your screwed cause you wont have any pr servers in your favorites, but for the guys who are getting the md5 mismatch problem from punkbuster you can easily add servers to your favorites before you get kicked by PB. Im sure that if you do this you cant play vanilla anymore, but so what!! Now you might try starting PR this way before you mess with the shader files and see if it works. I had already done it, so I couldnt go back and try it. In fact I recomend that you do try and enter PR through vanilla and your favorites before you change the shader files and let me know if it worked PLZ!! maybe someone who knows about computers will read this and beable to make sense of it.

Please do not listen to arn354. He's a frustrated guy who is over worked and under paid. We need this thread to be kept open to see all possible fixes.

arn354 wrote:Moderators - please close that topic.

One and forever:

It is no problem with PR itself.
It is no problem with Punkbuster itself.
It is no problem with the md5checks from punksbusted.

Those who have issues please look through the thread. Some of you posting have obviously not tried everything and expect this problem to go away by itself. If those of you with limited computer knowledge should be able to follow the basic fixes. It will not go away by itself without some work on your part so if you don't plan on doing any work you have no rights to complain about it.

Obviously there are some strange fixes for this problem. The most recent one with wood702 shows that.

There is no root cause for this issue. Some believe it's the installation of PR that mismatches certain files in the directories. Others believe it's a combination of factors including faulty installation mixed with internet packet loss and PB checks while the game is accessing memory all at the same time.

I have four theories so far...

1. PB has no reason to check a file more than once loading onto a server. If you login there is no way to change a file on the fly without halting the game so why check more than once? Perhaps once a map I might see. Constant checking over and over again while playing the game may be the reason why it checks a file ok one time and then the next kicks you for a MisMatch. Which would be the reason why sometimes you can go 5 minutes and other times only 2 minutes. I think simply changing this setting in PB would help a lot in this problem and relieve a little bit of lag from the servers. This would have to be fixed by the PB corporate team themselves. I don't believe there is a setting on servers to dictate the number of PB passes.

2. PB is checking your Memory because these files have been uploaded into memory. This is done so the game does not have to read off the Hard Drive except on loading the map. This makes the game play faster. Hence if you do not have enough memory on your computer or if you have corrupt or broken memory then errors may come up. There may even be an issue reading or writing to your memory through the North Bridge on your motherboard. At very least it may need to be necessary to run memtest86 to see if it is indeed your memory. Little known fact, if you have four sticks of memory equally 2GB, one stick could still be bad and you might never know.

3. Bad Installation or Driver issues. This could mean that you simply did not have a good installation if a new install or your HDD might be starting to lose sectors which means you need to keep an eye on your HDD and think about buying a new one in the future. Driver issues might be causing some kicks though that is not confirmed. At very least defragment your hard drive. Or attempt to reinstall everything from scratch. I have the step laid out for you in my post much earlier in this thread. That is the most common complete fix for BF2 bugs.

4. The Game gets confused. I really do think that the game relies so much on cached shaders and files and everything that when it loads the game initially it gets confused and doesn't load all the files correctly. Such as it's supposed to load up the PR shaders_client file instead of the BF2 one however sometimes it doesn't and loads the BF2 one anyways. Hence there is a shader mismatch and you get booted. Obviously if you computer is doing this all the time and if you trick the program by replacing the BF2 file with a PR one then it still technically screwing up. However by tricking it with the replacement you have fixed the issue with duct tape.

There are a few easy file replacement fixes such as wood's fix. They are scattered throughout this thread and forum. These are easy ones that have solved many issues. All they require is for you the user to read instructions and copying overwriting or replacing files after making backups of older files.

5. I added one more because it's the least likely to exist because it might only be true if your kicks only happen on a single server and no other server. Which means you would have to test it out on a wide variety of PR servers. This theory suggests that the server's PB settings are incorrect and they forgot to update correctly or forgot to comment out certain lines of the pbuser file on the server. Which is required for PR at this time.

This however is the last thing you should be checking because at this time arn354 may be correct.
If you have good installation of BF2 and PR.
If you do not have network issues or other programs sucking internet access.
If you do not have hard drive or memory access issues.
If you do not have malware or a virus corrupting your files.
If you do not have a server that has incorrect PB settings.

Then your PR game will work. If any of those five things fail then you will have issues.

In the immortal words of Arthur Conan Doyle, “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”

Please do not listen to arn354.

Then no one will solve it. And then please don't ask me how to solve it - do it on your own. Writing on your issue Kilroy costs me more time then connecting remotely and fixing it. In the time we are in contact about your issue - several others have no more issues.

He's a frustrated guy

- no not frustrated - but annoyed about people making everyoneelse (PR, Punkbuster, Punksbusted) responsible for their problems except themselves. And yes - perhaps not everyone outthere is smart enough top fix it on his own. Unfortunatly a computer is yet no xbox or playstation which would be the better choice for some people.

who is over worked and under paid

that might be the truth

locking the post might be the wrong decision - but in fact - it does not help the original poster to hop on his existing post nor does it help people just writing "i have the same..." - each issue is a own post - there is no general solution for each computer outthere - except all allready posted in your above post. But those are still not all possibilities and not all of them are correctly described.

Keep posts clean and just with informations about one problem and don't start assuming.

Someone has to tell those people the truth - even if it hurts and they have to admit yes my machine is bugged up.

Good Luck in solving the issue as long you search it @ PR @ Punkbuster or @ Punksbusted in general.

arn354 wrote:Then no one will solve it. And then please don't ask me how to solve it - do it on your own. Writing on your issue Kilroy costs me more time then connecting remotely and fixing it. In the time we are in contact about your issue - several others have no more issues.

Come on man. That was completely taken out of context by yourself. I was commenting on not listening to you about closing the thread.

locking the post might be the wrong decision

Yes it is the wrong decision. Hence my comment about not listening to you on that one suggestion.

- but in fact - it does not help the original poster to hop on his existing post nor does it help people just writing "i have the same..." - each issue is a own post - there is no general solution for each computer outthere - except all allready posted in your above post. But those are still not all possibilities and not all of them are correctly described.

Every post I have done was in answer to a post asking questions or keeping the users having these issues informed on the steps I am attempting to fix it. It's call dissemination of information. If I don't do this then people would be posting new posts about this issue on a weekly basis. Would you rather have one long thread or many short threads? I would rather have all the information in a single thread for easy of research for future players concerned on this issue.

Keep posts clean and just with informations about one problem and don't start assuming.

Ok so I'm assuming a little. Since there is no obvious root to this issue and since the people who have solved many many issues of this mismatch error have yet to write a comprehensive guide on all their fixes then it's not exactly easy to figure out what is going on. If I had the knowledge you have on this issue I would have already posted a comprehensive thread on every fix with detailed step by step processes for everything. I guess that's the IT Technical Support thinking processes I acquired in that field for many years.

Someone has to tell those people the truth - even if it hurts and they have to admit yes my machine is bugged up.

Until I researched this issue for the last 9 pages and until I spoke to you and the PB tech support and the TG server admins I didn't realize just how many "steps" there were in this entire process. I didn't realize how many different ways this whole thing could be fracked up. I am willing to bet many other users had no clue either. By documenting everything I have done and all the messages I have given the other players the processes I have followed giving them greater insight and education on the entire debugging process. I do not believe I have wasted my time nor do I believe I have done a disservice to the community. All I'm asking is for people to read a little and to show a little patience. If you feel I have wasted your time then I'm sorry you think that. However I did learn a few things from your advice and for that I'm grateful.

Good Luck in solving the issue as long you search it @ PR @ Punkbuster or @ Punksbusted in general.

Yes good luck to us all. And please do read all of it and search for it. You may see your solution on any of these pages. There are no easy answers so please do not believe someone can wave a magic wand and fix your issues. Through these nine pages so far you will find many different ways people have solved their issues. Until you have tried them all you are not done.

Cheers.

as said - each problem is unique. So yes i would rather like to see a nice and unique post of everyone having that issue - no monsterpost with problems from different computers having different causes.


Which operatingsystem do you use?

Do you run bf2 in XPSP2 combatibility mode (no file virtualisation...) hence vista is not officially supported?

Do you run bf2&pr as administrator?

Do you run pr.exe as administrator - hence filechanges are done?

Is Punkbuster properly installed and the pbservices working correctly?

Is your operatingsystem updated and working normally? Add systemstresstests here:

Add logs of hdd- and mem-checks here:

Add logs of online virus-/trojanscan here:

Add generated md5hashes of md5gen here:

Add screenshot of kickmessage here:

Always the same kickreason on the same file or always different?

Which servers did you try?

Which configs do those servers use?

.
.
....

but now i am stopping - i am again writing more then most people who have that issue.

It was no personal offence on you kilroy. The context was given by your post - then quote my lock-suggestion and add your don't listen to arn354. Other people just read your post and misunderstand it.

I am not meaning you posting in this thread again - i mean new people hopping on this post. The may read it but afterwards make a own post what they have done what they have allready read and so on. I am not going to pull it out of everyones nose.

Peace

Yo killroy I play with you all the time man,I hope you get your comp up and going. Did you try starting PR the way I said or not??? also, does it make any sense at all why it worked for me? Whats the difference between starting PR my way and using the shortcut? Maybe your answer lies in that. Hope I was some help.

guys i think it is time to scrap 0.756, i have re-formatted my PC re-installed BF2 and PR 0.756 and de-fragged both hard disks. and yes i still got the warning screen " run PR from pr.exe not BF2.exe"

again i solved this with deadfasts fix (the BAT scrpt) and i now get kicked for the MD5 mismatches. (like everyone else)

The Devs need to solve this or revert back to 0.7, im not saying everyone has this issue, but the amount of people that have both these issues or one of them is enough to damage the community. we have already started to fight amongst ourselves rather than fix it. and as far as i can see (after so many frustrating weeks) there is no fix.

sort it out Devs

{Edit: in response to arn354]
arn354 i personally have given a hell of a lot of info to the devs including all of the bullet-points (for XP SP2) you mentioned, and alot more, plus all the tests and checks (even more than you mentioned).

as far as they have told me "They are working on it" but i have had no more information as to anything they have found, or anything they are checking. it looks like a dead case for alot of people until the Devs let us know what is happening or what they are doing to solve it. i can also assure you that Killroy, Myself and others have given our specs and details of test to the Devs when we asked for help initially.

In my pr the shaders are in zipped folders, and I can't find the contents anywhere? Might this be the problem? Should I extract them to somewhere? The only problem is that when I tried to do that it said access denied (winrar)

I'm looking into the problems some people have with the new punkbuster checks and I have read the whole thread. First of all thanks to kilroy and arn for the help they have provided here.

I agree with arn that the problem is not related to the mod but to the local machines it is played on and possibly sometimes but seldomly it may be caused by the servers or maybe even communication trouble.

The two most useful posts to take a look at would be:

A step-by-step guide to solving the trouble by kilroy

and

A list of information vital for helping players who still have trouble with PB by arn

I think if I order the suspected causes of trouble from most frequently to most seldom I'd check out the reason for your trouble in the following order:

1. Do you start PR with the PR.exe (not the BF2.exe and also not an external program like X-Fire)?
2. Does the shaders_client.zip file in the mods/bf2 directory really get replaced by the one in the mods/pr directory? You may simply try to backup the file in mods/bf2 and then overwrite it with a copy of the one in mods/pr to test if the trouble goes away then
3. Does BF2 still use the old shaders in the cache? Delete the shader cache or change the graphics settings to induce a rebuilding of the shaders.
4. If it's another file than the shaders that PB complains about: Is the file REALLY ok? Best do your own MD5 check with the MD5 tool and compare it with a friend or someone on the forums. Several people get this problem even with a fresh install and it can be solved by copying the file from someone with a working version.
5. Is the problem just happening on one or 2 servers? Maybe they have a wrong check active there (Not too likely if many players play there but check out some more servers)
6. If it's a different file most times that PB complains it is likely that the file is not corrupt but the PC is having trouble (most likely with the memory) and is not running 100% stable.

That's my suggested order in trying to solve the problem. In my eyes a reinstall should not be necessary for most people.

I wonder why the servers check for unused vBF2 files at all but I guess the admins use some generic template for the checks which also contains them. Maybe we will communicate with them to remove any unneeded checks, but the actual problem is usually that the local file is corrupted. (This also happened to me after installing BF2 and that was long before I even started playing any mods)

I'll talk about this problem with some other devs and see if we find a good way to streamline the process for people to get help.

'[R-DEV wrote:Spearhead;664389']I'm looking into the problems some people have with the new punkbuster checks and I have read the whole thread. First of all thanks to kilroy and arn for the help they have provided here.

I agree with arn that the problem is not related to the mod but to the local machines it is played on and possibly sometimes but seldomly it may be caused by the servers or maybe even communication trouble.

The two most useful posts to take a look at would be:

A step-by-step guide to solving the trouble by kilroy

and

A list of information vital for helping players who still have trouble with PB by arn

I think if I order the suspected causes of trouble from most frequently to most seldom I'd check out the reason for your trouble in the following order:

1. Do you start PR with the PR.exe (not the BF2.exe and also not an external program like X-Fire)?
2. Does the shaders_client.zip file in the mods/bf2 directory really get replaced by the one in the mods/pr directory? You may simply try to backup the file in mods/bf2 and then overwrite it with a copy of the one in mods/pr to test if the trouble goes away then
3. Does BF2 still use the old shaders in the cache? Delete the shader cache or change the graphics settings to induce a rebuilding of the shaders.
4. If it's another file than the shaders that PB complains about: Is the file REALLY ok? Best do your own MD5 check with the MD5 tool and compare it with a friend or someone on the forums. Several people get this problem even with a fresh install and it can be solved by copying the file from someone with a working version.
5. Is the problem just happening on one or 2 servers? Maybe they have a wrong check active there (Not too likely if many players play there but check out some more servers)
6. If it's a different file most times that PB complains it is likely that the file is not corrupt but the PC is having trouble (most likely with the memory) and is not running 100% stable.

That's my suggested order in trying to solve the problem. In my eyes a reinstall should not be necessary for most people.

I wonder why the servers check for unused vBF2 files at all but I guess the admins use some generic template for the checks which also contains them. Maybe we will communicate with them to remove any unneeded checks, but the actual problem is usually that the local file is corrupted. (This also happened to me after installing BF2 and that was long before I even started playing any mods)

I'll talk about this problem with some other devs and see if we find a good way to streamline the process for people to get help.

I have tried all of these things repeatedly. Hours upon hours, and honestly I can't fix it. Just instant error message when I join a server. Guess I am done with PR by default.

but hey at least the suppression system is totally awesome and worth all this trouble.

i agree with the checks and i am WAY ahead of those, another thought that just crossed my mind today. what IF its the connection? example:

Punkbuster asks to look at Shader Client.zip
Your PC uploads to Punkbuster and internet connection gets a little break up
1 packet is lost and doesn't match the Punkbuster Global File.
MD5 Shader Client.zip kick len=(204

would that be the issue for this? and YES IT IS UNSOLVABLE!!!! unless of course you pay throught the nose for a better connection (not happening!)

Wow, dont I feel stupid!! Not one person has told me if they tried getting into PR the way that I suggested! You all tried starting up vanilla bf2 then just going to your favorites and clicking on a PR server? It works great for me!! ALL the other ways I still get the shaders warning, so there has to be something different about starting it my way. Please try and let me know if it worked for you. Maybe that will help the devs figure it out. PLEASE respond!!

@wood702: If you get the shader warning screen on startup it is because the bik video file with it is not being renamed. If you manually delete the file it will also not display the warning but if the warning screen pops up it's a good sign that also the replacing of the vBF2 shaders with the PR ones did not succeed. In your case you cirumvented both by replacing the vBF2 shaders yourself and by starting up via vBF2 which circumvents all intro videos. You are actually making yourself unnecessary work this way.

If you simply overwrite the vBF2 shaders with the PR shaders like I did recommend you simply need to rename the warning.bik file and it will start up like intended. The whole thing about your warning video showing up means that your OS (probably vista) is blocking our exe from doing the needed file renaming and copying. Someone here on the forums should be able to tell you how to make vista allow the pr.exe to do it's work. (I don't use vista myself)

Your PC uploads to Punkbuster and internet connection gets a little break up
1 packet is lost and doesn't match the Punkbuster Global File.
MD5 Shader Client.zip kick len=(2048 )

No - not possible.
If one or the packet is lost the check is considered failed - no kick at all.
If all (or several) md5querries fail or are lost you get another error-message: Ignoring MD5querries .

I've tried all the suggestions, I've even done 2 clean installs of BF2 and then PR.756 from new PR downloads. I'm not too sure what is going on with it. I've even run Antivirus and other cleaners thinking it may have been that. It all worked fine 2 weeks ago, then I loaded in last Thursday and it didn't work, Shaders error... I've reinstalled twice now, tried not installing PB from the default BF2 install the first time... and updated it manually. Still no luck.

I generally last 2 minutes in Tactical gamer before getting booted, Tcombat is between 5 minutes and 30 minutes before getting booted.

I'm willing to try just about anything now. Arn, want to try a remote session? Maybe I put something in the wrong place?

Any other advice would be greatly appreciated.

Oh and yes, I am loading in from the PR.exe, I've also tried the login to BF2 and then switch over (with limited 30min at Tcombat success :S)


Thanks a million,
Dave

[R-DEV]Spearhead wrote:@wood702: If you get the shader warning screen on startup it is because the bik video file with it is not being renamed. If you manually delete the file it will also not display the warning but if the warning screen pops up it's a good sign that also the replacing of the vBF2 shaders with the PR ones did not succeed. In your case you cirumvented both by replacing the vBF2 shaders yourself and by starting up via vBF2 which circumvents all intro videos. You are actually making yourself unnecessary work this way.

If you simply overwrite the vBF2 shaders with the PR shaders like I did recommend you simply need to rename the warning.bik file and it will start up like intended. The whole thing about your warning video showing up means that your OS (probably vista) is blocking our exe from doing the needed file renaming and copying. Someone here on the forums should be able to tell you how to make vista allow the pr.exe to do it's work. (I don't use vista myself)

When talking with jaymz, he did have me rename the warning file, he also had me delete another file that had a funny name with numbers and letters. Yes the system I was on was vista, and I am glad I dont have it either. What a pain!! So I dont really know how to talk back to you in computer language so I wont even try and sound like I know something u dont, all I know is the kid can play PR now and I dont have to deal with it anymore, cause im not there. Sorry I couldnt help guys

Ok an update for me. I did a memtest86 with my memory. I had 4 DDR sticks 512mb each for a total of 2GB of RAM. There was an error on one of the four sticks. So I started doing a memtest86 at least 2 complete passes on each of the memory sticks. I found that NONE of the memory sticks had any errors after 2 to 3 passes each. So I believe that one of my DIMM slots on the motherboard itself is busted. I ordered two 1GB sticks of DDR400 memory and got them in yesterday. I have fully tested with memtest86 and my two primary slots are good to go and so are the sticks. Full dual memory 2GB without error.

Now I'm in the processes of doing a full format and reinstall. So I am going to have completely new OS and Drivers and installed programs.

I am going to redo the MD5 Hash creation of the files after I install to insure they are correctly installed.

If my MD5 kicks continue I'm going to have to give up finally and for good after I send all my error reports, MD5 Hash and dxdiag information to the necessary folks. Simply put if it doesn't work correctly after all this... I'm sorry folks but I'm going to have to put the blame squarely on this new PB update and say it's in their hands now. I think I've done more than beyond anything and everything I can for this series of errors since the update.

Wish me luck!

P.S. And yes wood702 I will give your solution a try if I the curse of PB comes back. Then no one can say I haven't given everything and I do mean EVERYTHING a try.