In the landscape of PC gaming, few challenges are as frustrating as trying to play older multiplayer classics. Servers are shut down, matchmaking breaks, and security vulnerabilities go unpatched. XLauncher (developed by the XLabs team) has emerged as a community-driven solution specifically for two legendary, yet abandoned, Call of Duty titles: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (2011) and Call of Duty: Ghosts (2013) . What is XLauncher? XLauncher is a custom client and launcher that replaces the default executable and server browser for these older Call of Duty games. It is not a separate game , but rather a tool that works alongside a legitimate copy of the game (usually from Steam) to provide features that the original developers no longer support.
The original PC ports of these games relied entirely on matchmaking. As player counts dropped, finding a match became nearly impossible. XLauncher replaces this with a traditional server browser, allowing players to see all active community-run servers, filter by ping, map rotation, and game mode, and join directly.
One of the most dangerous aspects of playing old Call of Duty titles on PC is the presence of "Remote Code Execution" (RCE) exploits. Malicious actors could potentially take control of your PC just by joining the same lobby. XLauncher patches these critical security holes, making it safe to play online again.
Xlabs Launcher [upd] May 2026
In the landscape of PC gaming, few challenges are as frustrating as trying to play older multiplayer classics. Servers are shut down, matchmaking breaks, and security vulnerabilities go unpatched. XLauncher (developed by the XLabs team) has emerged as a community-driven solution specifically for two legendary, yet abandoned, Call of Duty titles: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (2011) and Call of Duty: Ghosts (2013) . What is XLauncher? XLauncher is a custom client and launcher that replaces the default executable and server browser for these older Call of Duty games. It is not a separate game , but rather a tool that works alongside a legitimate copy of the game (usually from Steam) to provide features that the original developers no longer support.
The original PC ports of these games relied entirely on matchmaking. As player counts dropped, finding a match became nearly impossible. XLauncher replaces this with a traditional server browser, allowing players to see all active community-run servers, filter by ping, map rotation, and game mode, and join directly. xlabs launcher
One of the most dangerous aspects of playing old Call of Duty titles on PC is the presence of "Remote Code Execution" (RCE) exploits. Malicious actors could potentially take control of your PC just by joining the same lobby. XLauncher patches these critical security holes, making it safe to play online again. In the landscape of PC gaming, few challenges
This could have to do with the pathing policy as well. The default SATP rule is likely going to be using MRU (most recently used) pathing policy for new devices, which only uses one of the available paths. Ideally they would be using Round Robin, which has an IOPs limit setting. That setting is 1000 by default I believe (would need to double check that), meaning that it sends 1000 IOPs down path 1, then 1000 IOPs down path 2, etc. That’s why the pathing policy could be at play.
To your question, having one path down is causing this logging to occur. Yes, it’s total possible if that path that went down is using MRU or RR with an IOPs limit of 1000, that when it goes down you’ll hit that 16 second HB timeout before nmp switches over to the next path.