Serious error on battle.net, READ!!

[NoctoZ]

This concerns people running starcraft under Windows 2000.

When you log into battle.net everything seems to be allright but if you do not join a game within the first few seconds all games get maximum latency and you can't join.
Sometimes you get by this by restarting the program and sometimes by restarting your computer.
Sometimes you can't get around it at all.

This is the output from my battle.net log file:

8/5 14:34:58.088 Connecting to Battle.net...
8/5 14:34:58.158 querying gateway
8/5 14:34:59.189 searching for the fastest server
8/5 14:34:59.199 connected to server
8/5 14:34:59.239 Connected to server 213.248.106.200
8/5 14:34:59.239 Validating ID
8/5 14:34:59.239 Checking for the latest version
8/5 14:34:59.419 client acknowledged
8/5 14:34:59.419 logon acknowledged
8/5 14:34:59.430 requesting latest version
8/5 14:34:59.620 user has latest version
8/5 14:34:59.620 Get latest battle.net icons
8/5 14:34:59.620 Verifying CD key
8/5 14:34:59.670 cd-key acccepted
8/5 14:34:59.670 Returning ping data to server
8/5 14:34:59.670 Get player profile
8/5 14:35:06.009 Connected to Battle.net
8/5 14:37:22.455 ERROR RecvDataThreadProc: connection lost (10054)
8/5 14:37:22.685 ERROR RecvDataThreadProc: connection lost (10054)
8/5 14:38:39.095 Disconnecting from server

I have talked to several talented network negineers and they all agree it has to do with the tcp/ip or udp handling.

This is a serious issue and I think Blizzard shoudl look into it. I have mailed support about it but I have not yet recieved a reply.

Don't ignore all your fans that uses windows 2000!!

[Kdr Kane]

I play Battlenet on Windows 2000.

It only does this when the Battlenet servers are overloaded. You can always see the latency correctly when you reconnect to the gateway. No need to restart the program. The problems will be continuous until the server load gets down.

I was concerned about a Windows 2000 problem for a long time. It's just bad, bad, bad battlenet. Usually, if you do get a game, you or someone else will be dropped anyway. Best to wait until later.

[NoctoZ]

But why does it work fine for my friends that don't run windows 2000? And thsi is not only a problem at certain hours.

It's every time I logon to b.net.

The problem do not exist in Warcraft II or Diablo II either.
And if I get in everthing works just fine and I have only been dropped once in a long time.

So I don't really believe itä's just due to serverload. There is something more to it.

[Kdr Kane]

It could be a problem with W2K. But, it does go away when the server traffic is low. I'm still keeping a eye on it.

My best guess is the DirectX 7.0 is causing problems. I don't really think it's a networking error.

[NoctoZ]

I don't use DX 7. I use DX 8.

And as this is the one and only game where it occurs and as it has not occured before I'm quite certain it's the SC code that causes it somehow. I don't thnk this problem existed efore 1.08 either.

I will quote a few people who have given some explanations to the problem.

"I can tell you that this is a common problem with Win2k + Starcraft. "

"By lowering the Rwin value down to a smaller value (say 23,000 Range) on a cable line it seems to correct the issue on win2k. However this value would be different on a 56K line.
I would think someone around here would have a decent setting for 56k lines.

I have noticed that for whatever reason Win2k seems to keep connections open long after the connection is closed. I noticed this seemed to be corrected by decreasing the packet size.

Rebooting also seemed to correct the issue. This seems to happen only in Starcraft and Broodwar. Diablo2 runs fine. This leads me to think its a UDP issue. Thus I used the Rwin value to alter the packets and this seemed to work out well. I no longer have the problem."

(I don't know whow to do this so I can't say if it works or not.)

"This was confirmed by clan Valhalla Legends to be a bug in the way SC/BW handled a UDP error. The game drops the UDP thread when it receives an error.
To fix this we put a shim between battle.net and the game. The shim forwards all the messages in both directions. This allowed us to change error codes to 0 on the UDP thread when found.

If you want to prove this is happening to you, open process viewer and look how many threads brood war uses. It should be 11 or 12. Now when you get the "game not responding" condition again, look back at pview and see how many threads. It is reduced by one.

We have spoken directly with Blizzard about this many times, submitted source code to them, packet logs, and told them exactly how to fix the problem(along with dozens of others, including specifics and source code).

Blizzard's response to us was that maybe they should sue us for reverse engineering their code. There, they solved the problem, right?

I'll see if maybe the programmers of our fix wouldn't mind releasing the patch for this UDP bug, since Blizzard is too arrogant to patch it, considering a 15 year old is the one who found out exactly what was happening and wrote the patch."

(This patch don't seem to work for me but for some people it do.)

"Hey hey.. I isolated that long ago
Actually I'm also sending out a patch for it now, but wanting to try a few people first to verify that it works"

(haven't got in touch with him so I haven't been able to try)

Obviously it's not only b.net overload so hopefully someone can get in touch with Blizzard about this or find a sollution of any kind.

[Kdr Kane]

I stand corrected. That is some good information. It is obviously a problem with the game code.

I would never recommend changing the RWIN or packet size value on Windows 2000. W2K has self regulating features that automatically adjust all of the TCP/IP parameters. Locking in to specific settings for one game may have poor performance effects for other applications.

But, my problem does go away when the servers are not loaded heavily. ;)

Be careful about downloading "patches" from unknown sources. Trojans are rampant.

[NoctoZ]

As long as StarCraft and CS works and I can surf the net I'm happy.
And I know that I should be vareful but it doesn't work at al now so it can hardly get worse, right...

[NoctoZ]

I got some response from Blizzard...

"The Win2k winsock will at times return an error relating to certain function
calls. When this occurs, Starcraft will no longer accept UDP packets
through port 6112. This is why you are receiving an error message.

When this happens, a Windows 2000 user will not be able to join Battle.net
games, and will become disconnected from any game in progress (though this
bug seems to mostly occur before a player gets into a game). Older versions
of the Windows winsock do not appear to return this particular error. Keep
in mind that Starcraft was not originally designed to work with Windows 2000
and we are working to make it compatible.

You can try to run Starcraft in compatibility mode by right-clicking on the
Starcraft shortcut and choosing "properties". There is a Compatibility tab
where you can select different emulation modes. Experiment with the
different emulation modes (Windows95, Windows98 and WindowsNT SP5) and see
if you are able to play more than one Starcraft game without having to
reboot and reconnect."

[Kdr Kane]

hmm... Compatibility mode. I believe they are referring to Windows XP. There is no compatibility mode in Windows 2000.

The rest of it confirms the problem is their crappy code. They aren't the first vendor I've heard blame it on Microsoft when they write something poorly.

[NoctoZ]

SOm more response from Blizz.

"For further diagnosis, please provide the following information:

-Internet connection type (Dial-up, Cable, ADSL, etc.) and ISP name.
-Approximate date and time you started having connection problems.
-Specifics about the frequency of the error and what you have done to fix
it.
-Please attach the BnetLog.txt file from the Starcraft folder on your hard
drive.
-Also attach dxdiag.txt and msinfo.nfo files:
1. Click on Start.
2. Click on Run.
3. Type in DXDIAG and press Enter or click OK, this will open the directX
diagnostic tool.
4. Click on the Save All Information Button (save this file to your windows
desktop and name it dxdiag).
5. Click on the More Help tab and open the microsoft system information tool
(MSInfo).
6. Click on File and choose Export (save this file to your windows desktop
and name it msinfo).
7. Attach the dxdiag.txt and msinfo.nfo files to a reply to this email.

I know this is a lot to do, but we are very interested in solving this
problem ASAP. We appreciate your assistance."

"If you don't have a Compatibility tab in the Starcraft shortcut properties,
download the latest Service Pack upgrade for Windows 2000 and the "Windows
2000 Compatibility Updates" component in the Recommended Updates section at
http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com/"

Still don't workj for me but hopefully they wil adress the problem.

[jrpm]

farbeit from me to disagree, Kdr, but my Win2k has a compatibility mode for shortcuts. The tab is on the right in the shortcut properties window.

[Kdr Kane]

If you see something different, I like to hear it. I don't see it in my Properties. I'm running W2K SP1. And I had previously looked in Windows Help and there is nothing about compatibility mode.

[Canis Lupus]

Hmmmm, I right-clicked on my Baldur's Gate II shortcut on the desktop and clicked on properties, and there IS a compatibility tab (I'm using Win2K) ... See attachment...

[Kdr Kane]

Nope. I'll let you see my Baldur's Gate Shortcut. Edited for security. I'm using NTFS. Is this the difference?

[Canis Lupus]

Ahhhh, that might probably be it - NTFS ... I am using FAT32 for Win2K coz I'm dual-booting to Win98SE ....

[Kdr Kane]

I think I found it. Service Pack 2 is not required. The knowledge base article is here (http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q279/7/92.ASP).

Wow. It's disabled by default. I ran the command:

regsvr32 %systemroot%\apppatch\slayerui.dll

and now it's enabled.

Cool. I learned something. :)

[Kdr Kane]

And now the new picture.

[Canis Lupus]

Hmmm, I wonder if there's a way to enable that "Security" tab in Win2K SP2 ... or if it's only present in NTFS'ed Win2K...

[Kdr Kane]

Only when you run "convert" and make it NTFS. Not compatible with Win9x.

[NoctoZ]

Forogt to past about htat activation thingy...

however it don't seem to work with compability modes either =(
I could jon one game yesterday though but then it refused to cooperate with me any more.

[NoctoZ]

Isn't there anyone who can give further thelp on this?

[Kdr Kane]

I thought we agreed it was Blizzard's bad programming causing the problems? :)

[NoctoZ]

But I have heard taht some have solved the problem but htey have apperently choosen not to share their knowledge =(

Or maybe they do not read this forum...