903 Patch Error

blankity

Member
I'm not a new player to PSO (I even once ran my own teth server) but this is really baffling me. The game installed fine, I changed settings no problem. First launch and the patch downloader works. I get in game, create a character, walk around the lobby and stuff. But suddenly I got disconnected. This was around 7:45AM (CDT) today. It was 45 minutes before the scheduled downtime so I had assumed sodaboy started it early and I went on my business until an hour later. I came back, and now I cannot seem to connect to the patch server anymore. I can load ephinea.pioneer2.net. I have windows firewall and Defender turned off (Windows 7). No anti virus. Flushed the DNS. Even changed my DNS to Google's/Cloudflare's. Reinstalled the game. The client loads fine. It shows how many players are online and no errors at the bottom. I can't really seem to figure out why I suddenly cannot connect anymore. I will note I am using AT&T mobile data currently as it will be another few more weeks before cable/internet is restored in my city (just trying to find a game that works on less than optimal internet). Though, I can't imagine I would be able to get in game, talk with someone and such then randomly get blocked by AT&T.

tl;dr
I got in game, disconnected, and now I can no longer connect to the patch server. Nothing changed between the two events unless I was banned by the server automatically.
 
You should be able to get through to the patch server even if you’re banned. I don’t see anything strange on our end there nor any automatic bans from today.

Pretty strange. Perhaps AT&T started blocking non standard ports or something randomly? Players online and what not is regular HTTPS port 443, but the patch server is not.
 
I uninstalled the game again, and restarted my computer and phone. Renewed to a new IP on my phone and reinstalled the game. Oddly enough, the client downloaded the ephinea.dll (something I didn't see it do the first time) and now whenever I start the client it shows an update status bar, something it definitely did not do before (before it would just freeze after starting then work). Patch download works now, however if it's not one thing it is another. Now I am stuck directly after the patch download, where it says connection in progress. For safe measure I typed in a wrong password and the game threw a wrong password screen at me so at least I'm getting past the login part, I believe. I will keep trying various things I guess, but I'm almost positive it is probably on AT&Ts end, as their data is the most restrictive I've ever encountered (in the US).

Edit:
psobb.exe was set to compat Windows XP SP 3, changed it to SP 2 and it works now. Huh.
 
Last edited:
Oh, yeah, 903 can be also seen when ephinea.dll doesn't load due to antivirus. You probably had a "DLL ERROR" in the lower left of your title screen before because your AV nuked the DLL.
 
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