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this way may help some players, but as you can read, most of us did try this way without an success.
so i did a new way to find a solution about it at all. the message
"service communication error: PnkBstrB.exe: heartbeat stopped"
means, that the communication to the punkbuster server has stopped. and the way with the pb-files did not help at all. so i did try some firewall settings. and as i could see, when you start 25assist, the pnkbstrB.exe is used (see timestamp) in 2 folders for the same time. once you will find this exe with new timestamp at
C:\Users\yourusername\AppData\Local\PunkBuster\AAO\pb
and others at
C:\Windows\SysWOW64

now, on my side, the clue was with the fresh installation that also my firewall-software was installed new. but it did only whitlisted the pnkbstrB.exe at the sysWOW64 folder, not on the other part.

so maybe another try tho fix the problem is to whitelist (add program to your firewall-rule) the pnkbstrB.exe at
C:\Users\yourusername\AppData\Local\PunkBuster\AAO\pb

this looks now to me like it is working. played a bit without any kick. but do not forget to reboot after adding the new rule.

good luck!