Understanding Netcheck Results
From Battleground Europe Wiki
The Netcheck .bat file is a batch file that runs a few standard commands to check your system and its connection, as well as your WWIIOL config settings, all at once and put them into one file called netcheck.txt. One thing it does is add your DXDiag report to the file, which has a little bit of useful information in it (the bulk of it is useless). We started asking for DXDiag reports a lot because many players simply are not sure what version of hardware drivers they have installed, have trouble locating that info, and, too often sadly, report incorrect information ("I have the latest drivers!" even when they are years old).
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Config Settings
version=1.25.5.255. wantsse2 true language 0 usenetworkroute 0 video NVIDIA GeForce FX 5700 resolution 1280x1024x32 sound NVIDIA(R) nForce(TM) Audio
Traced Routes to our game networks
66 Route Tracing route to 66.28.6.226 over a maximum of 30 hops 1 1 ms 2 ms 1 ms xx.xx.xx.xx (obscured intentionally) 2 5 ms 5 ms 6 ms xx.xx.xx.xx (obscured intentionally) 3 7 ms 7 ms 6 ms xx.xx.xx.xx (obscured intentionally) 4 7 ms 7 ms 7 ms xx.xx.xx.xx (obscured intentionally) 5 7 ms 7 ms 7 ms 66.28.6.226 Trace complete.
Pretty good, though I get 4 ms from home. :)
Unfortunately, players sometime get lines like this:
4 * * * Request timed out.
Not a good sign.
These let me see if there is a problem part of the route your data takes to our game servers, whether your dropping packets, if the connections are steady or wildly sporadic. It helps suggests what to look at and can help discover when the problem is a particular ISP that won't handle packet above 1568 bytes for example.
Active Connections
This section is information generated with the netstat -an command, showing all active connections. I'm only showing two generic lines in the example below, I actually have two dozen connections in my netcheck.txt report (but then I'm not playing the game).
Proto Local Address Foreign Address State TCP 0.0.0.0:113 0.0.0.0:0 LISTENING UDP 0.0.0.0:445 *:*
I look at this not for any specific information, but for the number of active connections. It is not surprising to find players who are having connections problems with more than 100 active connections. On rare occasions, I've seen players with more than 300 active connections. That strongly suggests three possibilities:
- You're running some file-sharing software like BitTorrent (which is fine, but now while you're trying to play the game). Other possibilities are a shared folder.
- You've got Virus! Or spyware? Or trojans and have been zombified to send spam emails.
- Or both of the above!
Some of them can be little programs part of larger applications that tell you when an update is available. "An update is available for Who'sTheBossNow 1.1!" These sit on your computer asking the internet, "Is there an update yet? Is there an update yet?" Generally, this isn't a bad thing. And if you disable these things, you might forget to turn them back on later, and miss an update for something. But some of these little buggers have been known to look for an update 30 times a second. Bad program! Bad!
Processes Running
This is the information you can see in the Processes tab of your Task Manager. This is useful in two ways.
- First, if there are a lot of processes running, then the likelihood that one or more of them is causing interference with the game performance or connection grows. So when I see someone with a bazillion processes running, I can suggest right away that they start shutting down a lot of stuff. When trying to solve a problem, a lot of processes means a lot more variables.
- Second, time permitting, I can search the net for the process names listed and look for troublesome program types, as well as viruses, spyware, etc. Of course, it is much faster if you do this yourself - after all, I don't work weekends or after 6 PM even.
Below, you can see a brief excerpt of the processes I have running (I actually have about two dozen open but I'm not trying to play the game right now). You can see how much memory these programs are taking (firefox is getting up there, but I have a bazillion tabs open and each of those has a long history - I live in firefox every day). You can even see what is playing on my Winamp.
Image Name PID Session Name Session# Mem Usage Status User Name CPU Time Window Title thunderbird.exe 3276 Console 0 52,608 K Running PLAYNET\bloo 0:01:18 _Action - Thunderbird firefox.exe 236 Console 0 81,592 K Running PLAYNET\bloo 0:06:05 Editing Understanding Netcheck Results - Battleground Europe Wiki - Mozi winamp.exe 1836 Console 0 17,468 K Running PLAYNET\bloo 0:00:05 1. Teddy Wilson - My Last Affair (Swiss Internet Radio - RadioCrazy Jazz teultest.exe 2240 Console 0 7,904 K Running PLAYNET\bloo 0:00:00 teultest notepad.exe 3748 Console 0 3,760 K Running PLAYNET\bloo 0:00:00 netcheck.txt - Notepad
DXDiag (DirectX Diagnosis) Info
I've deleted the unnecessary/irrelevant information generated in this report to show you what I'm looking for.
System Information (CPU, RAM, OS)
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System Information
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Operating System: Windows XP Professional (5.1, Build 2600) Service Pack 2 (2600.xpsp_sp2_gdr.050301-1519)'''
Processor: AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3400+, MMX, 3DNow, ~2.4GHz [Is it at or above minimum requirements?]
Memory: 1024MB RAM [Is it at or above minimum requirements?]
Display Devices (Video Card)
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Display Devices
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Card name: NVIDIA GeForce FX 5700''' [Is it at or above minimum requirements?]
Display Memory: 128.0 MB [Is it at or above minimum requirements?]
Driver Version: 6.14.0010.9136 (English) [Are the drivers up to date?]
Driver Date/Size: 7/12/2006 13:19:00, 4493568 bytes [Are the drivers up to date?]
Sound Devices (Sound Card)
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Sound Devices
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Description: NVIDIA(R) nForce(TM) Audio [Is this selected in the settings? (It should be)]
Driver Version: 6.14.0445.0031 (English) [Are the drivers up to date?]
Date and Size: 8/16/2004 18:43:24, 399104 bytes [Are the drivers up to date?]
Note: I almost never look at anything else in the long DXDiag reports. So, if you are going to post your DXDiag in the Community Support forums or the like, if you can remove everything below the Sound Devices section, you'll be doing everyone a favor.
