BC2 + some Antivirus/Internet Security products: Server browser problems

As noted in several forum threads, Client R8 doesn't work very well with some antivirus products.

Kaspersky Internet Security

Symptom: The server browser freezes for a long time when it is about to return results. The more servers that your search will return, the longer the freeze.

Reason: The server browser has been modified to do server-pinging using the non-admin Icmp* functions in Win32. (Earlier it used raw sockets.) This change makes the server pinging also function for non-administrators, but Kaspersky triggers on the game's behaviour.

We are in contact with Kaspersky Labs about this. They have developed a fix. You can either install it according to these instructions or wait for it to finish their internal compatibility testing (and eventually make it into the regular releases).

If you do not wish to install the test version, here are known workarounds:
1) Use join-by-friend, or your favourites list, or your history list
2) Make sure you search queries are so narrow that you only get 10-20 results
3) Uninstall Kaspersky Internet Security (merely disabling will not help; neither will adding an exclusion for BFBC2Game.exe) -- NOTE: this makes you vulnerable to viruses and the like.

ESET Smart Security

Symptom: All ping times are displayed as - or 999

Reason: ESET Smart Security thinks that all the ping responses are coming in from servers are the result of a Denial-Of-Service attack that has been triggered from some other machine, and it begins to ignore those the incoming ICMP PING responses.

We have not yet been able to reach ESET about this.

Workaround:
In ESET Smart Security, go into Setup> Personal Firewall> Advanced Personal Firewall Setup> IDS and advanced options> ICMP protocol attack detection: disable
This will not make your machine vulnerable to viruses, it only means that someone can crash your computer remotely using an ICMP-based Denial-Of-Service attack (which is a very unlikely event).

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If you experience either of these symptoms:
* Server browser freezes
* Server browser shows - or 999 in ping column for all servers

... then reply to this thread, and state:
* Which symptom you are experiencing 
* which antivirus/internet security product you currently have installed (incl. version number)
* if you found any workaround not yet mentioned - do tell

Posted in: BC2