Windower does not load Playonline

Hello,

I started playing FFXI again yesterday, having bought the ultimate collection: seekers edition (EU).

The first time I installed Windower my FFXI install was not yet finished, not sure if it matters. When I tried to start POL through it (after the game had finished installing) there was an error message that I cannot replicate anymore. Now whenever I click the Launch button the windower starts to load POL but nothing happens afterwards. There is no error or an ongoing process of any kind after the Windower screen disappears. Moreover, when I tried to uninstall and reinstall the Windower I still could not get the POL to start, nor the original error message to reappear so I could post it here.

I really need the Windower to be able to enjoy the game haha. What could the issue be?

Does playonline launch without windower?

Yes, I have been playing the game without windower for the time being with no problems.

I am on windows 7 if it helps.

If I had to guess i would say it was a registry problem, but since you already re-installed windower I'm not really sure. Try running Windower as admin see if that helps at all. Just shooting stuff out there till the real help arrives. 

Windower automatically runs as admin, so that won't help.

Did you try reinstalling FFXI? I wasn't aware of any issues with launching it before the install finishes, although it does write to the registry, so something could be screwed up there. Unfortunately I don't know what else it could be either.

I reinstalled FFXI fresh before installing windower, as I was having an issue with the registry before this. I finally got that fixed, and when I got around to installing Windower I'm stuck again. Out of curiosity, I have like 4 different FFXI registries. 2 sets of FFXIPAL and PlayonlineUS in my regular SOFTWARE registry, as well as one in the Wow6432Node registry. I'm not exactly literate with this stuff so I'm not sure if that's normal. My game launches fine out of Steam, I just can't seem to get Windower to launch POL. I tried tinkering with some things this afternoon in the registry, as well as changing the permissions given to Windower as well as both my POL.exe files, and still nothing.  I'm seriously confused. Any ideas at all would help. 

I have no idea what FFXIPAL is. Did you try reinstalling after these issues started happening?

Thanks for the assistance. Today I reinstalled and updated FFXI, letting the update run through the POL instead of downloading the patch contents from other sources. However, the problem still persists.

What I have noted is that when I uninstall Windower, it doesn't seem to uninstall completely: whenever I reinstall, the old profiles I have made previously are still there. That makes me wonder, whether there are some other leftover files from the uninstall as well, that may cause the program to not detect my POL. What do you think? Is there a way to completely delete everything regarding Windower on my PC?

Looking at the registry, I seem to have 2 versions of every folder related to FFXI, e.g. FFXi.FFXiEntry & FFXi.FFXiEntry1, FFXiMain.GameMain & FFXiMain.GameMain1. Is this how it is supposed to be? Maybe the fact there's two copies confuses the Windower in some way?

EDIT: Also, I cannot find a Playonline folder in the registry neither in the software folder nor the Wow6432Node, although all registry tweaking guides state that there should be a POL folder there. I'm really baffled to say the least.

The latter is definitely the problem. Windower is looking for POL in the registry. If it can't find it there... it can't launch it. As for why it isn't there, I have no idea... this shouldn't be happening, especially if you can still start it fine through Steam. Unless Steam uses its own registry entries for game launches.

if you have already installed it via steam and registered the game key. See if you can find someone around you that plays the game or even try and find a torrent of what you bought and use that to install the game. I've bought one of the FFXI expansions once via steam but didnt use the steam install. Otherwise, you "might" never get windower to work. Depending on how you get your copy, make a copy of it.....