[Xya]

Hello~

I just purchased and new PC with windows 7 and finally got FFXI and the new windower installed and running. Everything is running fine but I'm experiencing some horrible, choppy lag sometimes. I don't run all the fancy graphics crap that win7 comes with, but I'm still getting the same kind of lag with every element off completely.

My FPS will drop to 1-3 when anyone near me WSes, with some AoE buffs, and especially with BRD songs. It also happens when I Warp/Tele, so basically when any kind of effect is going on. It doesn't even have to be on my screen. During assault our BRD was buffing mages around a corner and down a hall slightly, I could see the text but not the animations... still horrible lag.


eMachines ET1831
Processor: Pentium Dual-core CPU E300 @ 2.60GHz
RAM: 4.00 GM (3.75 usable)
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit


Just wondering if anyone else has run into any lag like this. Windower/FFXI ran lag-free on my last computer: Windows XP, 2 GB RAM, AMD Sempron 3400+ processor 2.0 GHz.

[Raist5150]

@ Xya:

I would suspet Video Drivers, or at the least your driver config. Not familiar with the nVidia 7050 onboard graphics, but there should be an icon in your systray for pulling up the config. I would look for Anti-Aliasing/Anisotropic settings and put them on Application Controlled or at least the lowest settings, and disable V-Synch if you see the option. May help a little.

But there has been a lot of chatter about incompatible driver versions. I have experienced this myself with my ATI cards over the years. The newest isn't always the greatest. I think many nVidia users are having luck with ones in the 1.91 family. You can look up different driver versions here:

http://downloads.guru3d.com/

They now have a specific Windows7 category, but some are listed for BOTH Win7 and Vista/64 in the Vista category as well.

Raist

[ImageX]

Still no response from anybody about why my plugins aren't loading as stated in my earlier post on page 2? I would really appreciate some help with this issue as I really miss using the plugins. Thanks.

[Raist5150]

ImageX, on 24 December 2009 - 03:05 PM, said:

Still no response from anybody about why my plugins aren't loading as stated in my earlier post on page 2? I would really appreciate some help with this issue as I really miss using the plugins. Thanks.

Vili did respond to your issue directly, said he fixed it by changing drivers when it happened to him:

http://forums.window...post__p__193696

Driver issues seems to be a common problem with Win7 these days....


Raist

[nefarious]

Does this twice, identical message both times. Can just click cancel twice, doesn't really slow down stuff.


I think it's because I have the BGM and SFX folders like emptied out, per a suggestion from someone on making the obnoxious startup music not play, but yea... any way to suppress this?


Btw this is at launch just incase that wasn't clear.

This post has been edited by nefarious: 25 December 2009 - 05:44 PM

[Tores2053]

Same issue as others. Win 7 x64 Ultimate, GeForce 9700M. Works fine as a 'windowed mode', but no plugins. Also change focus to another window causes this crash.


Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: APPCRASH
Application Name: pol.exe
Application Version: 1.18.12.0
Application Timestamp: 49bfb399
Fault Module Name: StackHash_53ce
Fault Module Version: 0.0.0.0
Fault Module Timestamp: 00000000
Exception Code: c000041d
Exception Offset: 75894cad
OS Version: 6.1.7600.2.0.0.256.1
Locale ID: 2057
Additional Information 1: 53ce
Additional Information 2: 53cef653b1d38418f131068794ba7e21
Additional Information 3: 7f1a
Additional Information 4: 7f1a20bad71837d14d26354d5c028088

I have changed my graphics drivers to the official (and latest) working ones for the laptop, and no fix.
In XP SP3, and Vista SP3 compatibility mode same issue.

Had no issue on this laptop with Win7 7100 Ultimate x32.

[Themutznutz]

As yet, whilst this "error" has occurred a few times, I am as yet unable to state what factors cause it to allow others to replicate.

Randomly, Windower will crash (in a similar manner to the old crash-on-exit thing), "POL has encountered an error and must close". No reasons given, it just crashes out. Seems to happen mainly during a change of state (Drawing weapons, changing zones, resting etc) but that may just be coincidence. Occurs totally randomly in terms of time, sometimes after 2 mins online, sometimes not for 10 hours+. At this time I have not found a common theme to the crashes, other than it happens.

Running:

Windower 3.42
Vista Home Premium x64
Q6600
8800GTS (Latest drivers)
4Mb DDR3 RAM

[Raist5150]

Tores2053, on 26 December 2009 - 01:33 PM, said:

Same issue as others. Win 7 x64 Ultimate, GeForce 9700M. Works fine as a 'windowed mode', but no plugins. Also change focus to another window causes this crash.


Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: APPCRASH
Application Name: pol.exe
Application Version: 1.18.12.0
Application Timestamp: 49bfb399
Fault Module Name: StackHash_53ce
Fault Module Version: 0.0.0.0
Fault Module Timestamp: 00000000
Exception Code: c000041d
Exception Offset: 75894cad
OS Version: 6.1.7600.2.0.0.256.1
Locale ID: 2057
Additional Information 1: 53ce
Additional Information 2: 53cef653b1d38418f131068794ba7e21
Additional Information 3: 7f1a
Additional Information 4: 7f1a20bad71837d14d26354d5c028088

I have changed my graphics drivers to the official (and latest) working ones for the laptop, and no fix.
In XP SP3, and Vista SP3 compatibility mode same issue.

Had no issue on this laptop with Win7 7100 Ultimate x32.

Have you tried the 1.91 family of drivers? This seems to be coming up often as a solution to many of the Vista/Win7 users with nVidia cards. There was a post recently in this thread for a 64 bit 7600 build user where this solved problems on loading:

http://forums.window...post__p__193696

You can get older versions of the drivers from guru3d here if you want to try others:

http://downloads.guru3d.com/

Raist

Edit:
just an afterthought--make sure to completely remove the drivers before installing another version--ESPECIALLY if downgrading. Guru3d should still have some good driver cleaners you can run after using the driver's/windows uninstall options to make sure all the DLL's and regkeys are removed.

This post has been edited by Raist5150: 26 December 2009 - 05:44 PM

[Vili]

Tores2053, on 27 December 2009 - 03:33 AM, said:

Same issue as others. Win 7 x64 Ultimate, GeForce 9700M. Works fine as a 'windowed mode', but no plugins. Also change focus to another window causes this crash. I have changed my graphics drivers to the official (and latest) working ones for the laptop, and no fix. In XP SP3, and Vista SP3 compatibility mode same issue. Had no issue on this laptop with Win7 7100 Ultimate x32.

I said this in an earlier post on page two. To those that are having problems with plugins not loading and crash when you Alt-Tab as I stated before it was the drivers in my case. I Was using the Nvidia 191.07 drivers which worked fine and when I upgraded them to the 195.62 to check some random restart issues (Turns out it was PSU) my game would load fine and say windower (Insert Version here) in the title bar but when the game went to full screen it would be SE's full screen. Check the lighting by hitting F11, does your console load, any macro's work, does it crash when you Alt-Tab? If not try older driver's. Please post back if that works maybe there is something that can be fixed in a later version (I don't know anything about programming. Just a long time reader). I think Raist said in an earlier post, new isn't always better. Hope this helps!!!

Nvidia Driver Downloads Advanced Search - http://www.nvidia.co...aspx?lang=en-us

[Xya]

Raist5150, on 24 December 2009 - 11:13 AM, said:

@ Xya:

I would suspet Video Drivers, or at the least your driver config. Not familiar with the nVidia 7050 onboard graphics, but there should be an icon in your systray for pulling up the config. I would look for Anti-Aliasing/Anisotropic settings and put them on Application Controlled or at least the lowest settings, and disable V-Synch if you see the option. May help a little.

But there has been a lot of chatter about incompatible driver versions. I have experienced this myself with my ATI cards over the years. The newest isn't always the greatest. I think many nVidia users are having luck with ones in the 1.91 family. You can look up different driver versions here:

http://downloads.guru3d.com/

They now have a specific Windows7 category, but some are listed for BOTH Win7 and Vista/64 in the Vista category as well.

Raist

I did some tinkering around and it seems to be running a little better. The drop was happening when I changed jobs as well and now its not dropping nearly as low. About the same as my last computer.

I'll try looking at the drivers as well and do some testing, thanks ^^

[Montsegur97]

Well, I've read this thread, done everything that's been suggested and I still crash on alt+tab. Everything loads up with or without plugins. I rolled back my drivers to 191, set everything to run as administrator. re-installed windower 3.42, I don't know what else to do...

[MrReinhardt]

I dl'ed the 195.62 drivers from nvidia, and low and behold problem solved. If you have an Nvidia card TRY THESE DRIVERS over the 191 drivers.

Just a reminder, I had no console loading and could not play windower out of focus, both work perfectly fine now.

[ZealPath]

Not a major thing but for some reason my windower is not unloading properly anymore when I quit. When I initially upgraded to 3.42, when using the shut down function, it would fully shut down, closing the window properly, now I get a black pol window which I need to close manually to end it. Also, if I use the log out feature, I get dumped back to pol but it is the same black screen and I can't actually do anything.

This is a little similar to what was happening before with 3.41, except it isn't actually crashing on exit with an error message, just hanging. Running Windows 7, only thing I can think of that's changed since I originally upgraded to 3.42 was the pol update sometime last week, otherwise for the life of me I can't think of anything that would have changed to cause this.

hmm, I now observe that if I log in, then log out again first thing, the problem does not occur. Seems like it could have something to do with the length of time I'm logged in (I tend to leave characters logged in for the better part of the day sometimes), or something that's occurring during a play session which cannot unload properly, maybe plugin related.

This post has been edited by ZealPath: 29 December 2009 - 05:36 AM

[hks18psigst]

i can sign in fine and everything works... just i get a "Resources: Failed to read areas"... windower doesn't crash but i'm just curious whats going on. i downloaded and replaced resources.xml from the download on the site but still the same problem.

[Raist5150]

Yeah, it appears they started doing something a little different with the call from POL to launch FFXI. I got a fialed to init DirectX error for the first time ever with my setup (3 years+ with Windower), and that didn't go away until I setup SE friendly resoultions and logged in once via SE's launcher..

Ever since, the on screen display overlay from ATI Tray Tools I set up to display my temperatures in the upper right corner no longer loads in FFXI. This has been a long-standing problem with some steam apps (they only want their OSD to display, so it kills ATT's OSD on launch). It still works in everything else, and I had made no changes to the system except for virus definitions and POL update.

For the crash on exit issue, you could try the unloadall command to drop all plugins before shutdown. I had actually setup a key bind to call it when I was using 3.41. I think it will pick it up from game chat if you use //unloadall, instead of pulling up console first.

Raist.

[MrReinhardt]

same about the resources, even updated it.

[Beeman110]

Raist5150, on 23 December 2009 - 06:18 PM, said:

Are you running Windows Defender or Microsoft Security Essentials? Not sure about Defender, but MSE does have a detection that blocks programs from hooking into executables like Windower does. If you have either these, did you try creating an exception for the Windower and Play Online folders? May be a good idea to do this for any other security software as well, just in case.

Raist

Added everything to Defenders white-list and even tried turning it off, still nothing. Looks like Win7 has MSE built in, but I am having problems searching on how to start the program to add to white-list and/or turn it off. Any help on how to access MSE to try either of these would be appreciated. It seems like the only option left as I still have to re-boot the computer and select the windower.exe before anything can load to get it to work. Thanks

[Raist5150]

Yeah, I don't use it... and finding any decent documentation can be like the proverbial needle in a haystack. But I managed to find something promising:

http://maximumpcguid...ime-protection/

This details how to open up and configure Real-Time Protection (you can actually toggle off real-time scanning of all files on your drive here). If you look at the screen shots though, you will see a list of items on the settings tab you can edit like Processes and Files that are excluded.
Not sure if you can use wild-cards or just list the root of the folder here. Hopefully it has a browse function, but knowing Microsoft, you will have to type the path manually...

Raist

[Reiajeia]

Hello!

I've pretty much had NO problems with Windower 3.42 and Win7 Ultimate. There are times that when I'm away from the computer I'll time out, I have it set so that this never happens. There are also times that I'll randomly dc, log right back in and then dc again and it'll say there was an error and shut it down completely. I looked around and couldn't find anyone else with this issue listed on here.

I'd like to be able to leave my character logged in and bazaar over night, but I'm not able to do so when it times out on me.

Thanks!

[Phoenixhr]

I just tried a few other things. I didn't think folder security would be a problem but then i remember this is windows 7 and they shanged the default folder security permissions. As far as the crash on play problem, this was resolved for me by allowing the windows to install to it's default location (Program Files (X86)). From there the app had enough permissions to hook onto POL. When i ran it from the FFXI folder (c:\games\PlayOnline in my case) It failes every time. Just fyi for people to check the permissions on the folders you're installing it to if it's not the defaults. Later i'll try and reset the owner and permissions to Everyone and see what happens with a custom folder install.

Now i'm just having the alt-tab problem >.<