Stopping party poker snooping and setting minimum user permissions

[rabbitlover]

What is VMWare?

[HedonismBot]

Why should I get these programs, what is Party doing that you are worried about?

[omgwtf]

To me, this is a very frustrating issue. I have twice upgraded to bigger, beefier systems only to see Party slow everything even more. I also experience the mouse jumping and cards pausing, and I have a dual core 2.8 Ghz, 2 gig of RAM, and all that you would expect on a system like that.

It almost seems that the bigger/beefier system you have, the harder Party thinks it should be scanning your system. I don't have or use any banned software. I don't even use AHK or the other helper apps that I see posted here (other than FPHG, which I only use occassionally).

I think that the mouse jumps, in particular, are related to screen grabs, which Party's site denies that they do. Something to understand about screen scraping is that most systems are not designed for transferring data from the video card to system memory, so this operation is very slow. And when this transfer is occuring (I don't remember the reason) most interrupts are disabled and thread switches are disabled on that processor. This is why the mouse stops moving, and it is one of the very few things that an application can do to make the mouse "jump" like that. I have 3 monitors 1600x1200, 1600x1200, and 1280x1024, all 32-bit color. That's 20MB of data transfer if they scrape all of my monitors.

From Party's site:

[ QUOTE ]
We do not scan your hard drive or take screen shots from your machine.

[/ QUOTE ]

I call [censored]... I don't see how the mouse jumps can reasonably be anything else.

I've tried snoopfree on my old computer, but Party wouldn't run if it was installed. On my new computer, I tried running Party in a secondary user account with restricted rights, but that prevented FPHG from running (I don't use it all the time, but if I'm observing a game I like to have it available) and it didn't seem to do much to prevent the slowdowns.

One thing that I suspect has happened, is that Party has looked at my browse history and might have flagged me as a higher risk. I occassionally browse the forums at winholdem.net (never when PartyGaming.exe is running), so that I can keep somewhat abreast of what the bot writers are doing, since I happen to view that as one of the biggest threats to online poker. And I ONCE visited poker prophecy to see what it said my stats were while Party was running, and it freaked out.

Over the weekend, when Party was running miserably slow, Party rewarded me with a CAPTCHA anti-bot test. So, once Party slows down the system enough it figures you must be running a bot, and throws up the verification dialog. GRRRRR. Nevermind that I have 4 other super-laggy tables that require action and the timer is ticking down on those as well.

I have nothing on my system that I need to hide from Party, but I really don't like them snooping around or taking screen shots of whatever else I'm doing. I really don't trust that Party has taken ANY precautions whatsoever to protect my (inapproprately obtained) personal information from misuse from an underpaid, unmotivated worker in an overseas call center.

But mostly it bothers me that Party's software seems to be so concerned with snooping on my system that I can barely play poker.

Has anyone here had any success dealing with the mouse jumps in Party?

Here is how I think this problem would need to be solved: Someone needs to write a party launcher that isolates PP from the rest of the system. It could run under a special restricted user account, or have the option to run as the current user but with restricted access to the hard drive. Once it is loaded, all calls to the Win32 DC functions and BitBlt functions could be monitored to prevent the calls that will transfer data from a screen DC back to system memory. Finally, SetWindowsHookEx would need to be virtualized to transform Party's global snooping hooks into "app global" hooks.

One final thing I would add: the mouse jumpiness isn't always present -- it seems to come and go. It seems to happen a bit more often when there are 60K+ players, but I'm not sure it's really a pattern. Other times Party is super-snappy and averages <1% CPU usage.

[rabbitlover]

Hey, what is it exactly that causes the mouse to be erratic with Party?

I also notice after several hours of play there, and after opening and closing of several tables the dealing of the cards is real jerky. Is this something they are doing or is it Window resources?

Thanks

[iamastud]

VMWARE is software that allows you to set up a virtual computer on your computer. This "virtual computer" will be all that any outside person or site will be able to see of your computer. Only screens or files or programs running on this virtual computer will be visible to the outside.

Th virtual machine can be set up to be run using any operating machine that you wish it to be. You are essentially creating a machine within a machine. Anything else is sheiled to the outside. If a virus is out on your virtual machine, then only your virtual machine is infected. Your computer essentialy becomes untouchable and unviewable to the outside world, including party.

[djames]

I'm a tool and know nothing about computers, but, I do know that infrared mice can jump if your table top isn't flat. For those of us that play alot, the table where your mouse resides can become scratched. You guys sure it isn't something stupid like that? This happened to me before, so I put down a plastic mouse pad ... no more jumping.

[Ricks]

[ QUOTE ]
To me, this is a very frustrating issue. I have twice upgraded to bigger, beefier systems only to see Party slow everything even more. I also experience the mouse jumping and cards pausing, and I have a dual core 2.8 Ghz, 2 gig of RAM, and all that you would expect on a system like that.

[/ QUOTE ]


You may be having a problem with your system. I have an equivalent system and I have no problem running 10 tables on Party, 4 on UB (I think UB uses more resources than Party), importing both sites to PT, and running various other programs.

[omgwtf]

I was seeing this same problem on my old computer, which was one of the reasons I upgraded. Only Party has this issue, and the CPU spikes are always within the Party app. This new machine is almost exactly as received from Dell, almost nothing has been installed on it -- not even Office.

And as I mentioned, the behavior of the mouse jumping (indicating that interrupts are not even being processed) is usually caused by screen scraping. There are not many things an app can do that lock up the system so much that the mouse even stops moving.

[TJD]

you mention "mouse jumping" and I have a similar problem that I cannot track down.

I use MTH but the option to move mouse to active table is unselected. However, it seems as if when a window becomes active the mouse is forced to that window. This is annoying as I have 3 monitors and to have the mouse jump from the lobby to a table that has just become focussed is a pain in the arse.

Any ideas. There is no seting I can find in the intelli-mouse dialog that seems to set this mouse follows focus action.

Cheers

trevor

[rabbitlover]

[ QUOTE ]
I'm a tool and know nothing about computers, but, I do know that infrared mice can jump if your table top isn't flat. For those of us that play alot, the table where your mouse resides can become scratched. You guys sure it isn't something stupid like that? This happened to me before, so I put down a plastic mouse pad ... no more jumping.

[/ QUOTE ]

Mouse jumps with Party, NOT with Stars. Same table, play 8-10 hours per day.

It's Party's screen scraping that is doing it.