Burning-Chrome

Thanks everyone! Yes, I want to stress, I am _not_ pointing fingers. I support punkbuster and what it tries to do, which is why I only play on punkbuster enabled servers. And yes, in my case, in the end, the appeal process did work as it is supposed to, I just wish EvenBalance would give me alittle more heads up, even in vague language, so I could rest more comfortably that this will not happen to me again. As I mentioned, I played thru the recorded game file countless times and there was nothing I could see from any angle that could have been seen as a cheat or hack (IMO). Also, EvenBalance said an error was made on the morning of 6/11. Within hours of my posting an appeal to PBBans the EvenBalance URL showing this, my ban was lifted and my player name was removed from the MBI, so hats off to PBBans for moving so rapicly on this once a decision was made in my favor! Thanks again, Mike Oncale, aka, Burning-Chrome

Hello, please forgive the length of this post and any redundencies or foolishness of my questions, I have tried to read all FAQ's prior to posting here. I only seek answers to what has happened to me over the past two weeks. First, myself: I have played BF:2142 for over 900 hours using the same game persona, I have over 29,500 deaths (I have been kill literally 1,000's of ways in all unseemly fashions), I only use my one, long time screen name of "Burning-Chrome" with publicly available stats on EA, I have never given out my game CD-Key, my BF:2142 is a legally purchased version from Best Buy and registered with EA, I am also running a legal, registered copy of the Northern Strike Expansion pack. I have all game patches only from officially sanctioned EA sites. I am running XP Professional, service pack 2 with all security updates and patches. No one ever touches my machine except for myself. I am a software developer by education and trade and I have licensed copies of the MS C++6.0 IDE and a large number of legal software tools, both commercial and open source on my system. I am running behind MccAfie anti virus and firewalls, I do not visit game hack sites, I do not download suspect files from P2P file sharing sites. I have not updated my NVIDEA GeForce 7800 GTX video drivers in over a year. In most regards, my system is fairly well protected and locked down. On 5/24, I was kicked off of the GUN BF:2142 server for a "gamehack #80345" violation, and saw my ban here on PBBans.com. Shortly after this, I was kicked off of the ATU server and then other servers as my named was propagated on the MBI banned player list. Because my violation was >50000, I was directed to appeal at EvenBalance.com. I did so, giving them any and all relevant data. Various members and admins at the GUN and ATU servers were confused (as was I) at my being banned as, they all saw me as a very long time, stand up player who never abused other players, never whined whether I won or lost, I just loved to play this game. It was my best guess at the time that I somehow (maybe?) picked up a corrupt game file or violating text string in IRC or an instant messaging app, or in some way, had my machine compromised without my knowledge, permission, or consent, and that an automated punkbuster scan of my memory or files turned something up. To this day, I still do not know. Yesterday, on 6/11, after reviewing all of my supporting information and notes, EvenBalance recommended removing my name from the banned list as it appeared that my getting banned was done in error. Shortly afterwards, I was happy to see here on PBBans.com, at: http://www.pbbans.com/mbi-viewban-749f584b-vb71463.html I was removed from the MBI list and I can now go back to the servers where I have played for over 18 months and resume playing. My question now is, what happened?! What broke down in the system that caused me to somehow trigger a punkbuster gamehack 80345 violation in the first place? I am _not_ pointing fingers, please do not get me wrong, I support what punkbuster does and that is why I have always limited my play to punkbuster enabled servers. If I did in fact have a corrupt file or text string in memory or disk, I would like to know what it was so I can reinstall the game and all patches if need be. I do _Not_ want this to happen a second time! On the original PBBans.com entry that showed my ban of 5/24, a server evidence log file was presented as evidence of my violation. I was never presented the opportunity to see or examine this log file in any way. I did manage to recover the recorded game data file from from the GUN server from the morning of 5/24 and I replayed it countless times, thru my eyes and thru the eyes of players around me, looking for _anything_ I might have done that may have been percieved as a hack or cheat. Saddly, I could find nothing (and my team lost that map). My machine is locked down pretty tight, I would like to examine my own log files here from the days leading up to the 5/24 ban of myself and see for myself, if something got onto my system, and How it got there so I can avoid it in the future. It was never made clear to me specifically what a gamehack 80345 is, whether it is a digital signature of a known hack to a .exe or .dll file, a technique, a known cheat, etc. EvenBalance did not give me a specific reason for the admission of an error being made, they only said "sorry for any inconvenience". Ahem.... Yes, well, thank you, but I would still like to know _what_ precisely was it on my part that _triggered_ this violation. I was "caught" by "-=GUN=-HUB", so I can only infer that an automated scan tripped and "caught" me, but, I would like to know what exactly brought this on so I can avoid it in the future. What was scanned and what was found, and do I need to do any cleanup on my system before I re-visit punkbuster enabled servers? My apologies for the length of this post but I just finished up 2 weeks of having my long time BF:2142 player name trashed and accused of a gamehack, when apparently, none existed. Any input from someone here more knowledgable than myself on this whole ban violation thing would be _greatly_ appreciated! Many thanks in advance for your time and thank you for the opportunity to post here, Mike Oncale, aka, Burning-Chrome [email protected]