How to Fix Punkbuster for Call of Duty 4 on Steam

I bought CoD: Modern Warfare on Steam today only to find that I got a “Punkbuster is not initialized” error whenever trying to start up multiplayer. After a bit of digging, I found a fix.

Go into your Call of Duty 4 directory. If you’re running Windows XP, it is likely at the following path:

C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\common\call of duty 4\PB

Run the program pbsvc.exe from this path and let it do its configuration mojo. It takes a few minutes.

Download a new version (3.4) of pbsetup.exe from the Punkbuster web site.

Run the new Punkbuster setup, click “Add Game,” and select Call of Duty 4.

Now click “Check for Updates.” It should download new Punkbuster files for CoD4.

Congrats, your Call of Duty 4 multiplayer should now be fixed.