Windower/plug-ins seem to work fine, but addons...

As stated in title, Windower and plug-ins such as Unlimited load and work fine on my computer. From console I can see add-ons such as Battlemod, Distance, and Timestamp 'load' but none of them work or show signs that they do. I get no crashes, just they aren't working. This has been going on about a week now and I've tried many things, up to even last night I deleted/uninstalled the entire game & Windower and then downloaded/re-installed (to their default install paths) and same scenario. I'm a Windows 8 64-bit user. Any suggestions or something obvious I'm missing? I know addons get their own directory, is maybe something somehow not pointing to my character or my install path for the game? Thanks for your time.

Try typing //lua, what does it display in the console?

If I type //lua in chat box nothing happens. If I open console then type lua (with no slashes) it gives me:

LuaCore v1.7.13.2: Command Listing

       (L)oad <addon>  - Load a Lua addon.

        etc

        etc

        etc

        unloadall - Unload all loaded Lua addons.

In between Load addon and unloadall more commands were show I just didn't type them all.

That is very strange... as if it doesn't recognize your chat input. Can you type //lua list (or just lua list in the console) and see if any addons are loaded?

Do any other Windower commands work? Like //showfps, can you try that?

Seems like console commands work: showfps and lua list brought up their respect items (list said battlemod, timestamp, distance, and silence are loaded....but they aren't.) And once again trying the commands with // via chatbox did nothing. I know Unlimited (a plugin) works. The fps is wonderful and via the counter in the top-right I can pbjectively see it is working as intended.

This is strange...I've been playing this game on/off 12 years and gone through many iterations of windower and new computers/operating systems etc. and have never encountered this. I recently came back after a 1 year long break, got to have windower working. I am willing to try anything at this point. Really appreciate you responding.

As before from a few weeks ago I still am only with these Add-Ons: battlemod, distance, Silence, timestamp. These are my plugin .dll's: LuaCore, Unlimited.

Some additional observations I have made the past few weeks dealing with this (no improvement - still plugins that work nowadays DO work, whereas Add-Ons do not, despite them being 'successfully loaded'):

-Pressing Ctrl + F1-F6 or Alt + F1-F6 to target alliance members instantly freezes/crashes Windower

-Typing in console 'timestamp help' once the game loads up gives me an error "timestamp: lua error (runtime) - timestamp/timestamp.lua:181: attempt to index field 'chars' (a nil value)"

   For reference, this is line 181:     log(chat.chars.wsquare..' timestamp [<command>] help -- shows the help text.')

-In contrast, typing 'bm help' in console brings up the list of commands available to use. I try 'bm targetnumber', refresh bm help and notice it has been successfully toggled to (false). Even thought still no signs BattleMod is working at all (all text remains the same).

-Possibly completely irrelevant but I also got FFXI View to work just fine.

-To reiterate: the plugin unlimited, the fps counter, the console, the windower launcher as well as the mandragora icon in the top-left of my ffxi screen all work as they normally should. Typing //bm help or // anything does nothing after I press enter.

Maybe this might spark something you guys see that I am not. I will keep adding as I discover.

The Timestamp error is just that, an error in the Timestamp addon and I just fixed it. Like we said before, it seems like the chat handler is broken in some way. I'm not entirely sure how yet, but I would like to debug this further, do you think you could join us on IRC at some point?

I'd be happy to join you guys in IRC to help debug this further. I downloaded the FFOChat plugin, seems to load fine (no errors) but is not working...the 'chat handler' being broken possibly maybe having something to do with this. Also, http://irc.ffochat.com/ and http://ffochat.com/ bring me to the same page - what looks to be a mostly dead forum with no links to a chatroom anywhere.

Apparently the web chat got taken down, which means you'll need to use an IRC client. Google for one, there are a lot of them (mIRC, HexChat, etc.). Then enter irc.windower.net as the host, the default port works fine (should be 6667). The FFOChat will not work due to the same error, because the chat handler appears to be corrupt.

"Find" is not working as well it seems

Ok so after todays update + what windower DL'd after said update out of nowhere timestamp, battlemod, distance are working as intended....I haven't changed anything recently so something in the update must've fixed this. Crazy that it is now working after an update which usually jacks things up even more. I tried to get on Hexchat btw but apparently I am not smart enough to figure out how to use it even with the info you gave me for server etc. I will update this further as I learn more about this issue. Thanks again for everything you do guys, you have no idea. Now to see if I can get GearSwap to work and start working on my sets again >.<

To add, now typing //unload unlimited works so I assume I can use other commands without having to use the console again. Epic.

That kind of makes sense, as we did change some chat related things things update and fixed a few things that were broken for a long time. Only we didn't know that anyone was affected by the broken code. But good to know it went away!