Technical issues in Campaign

[Selphiie The Enchantress]

Yeah, i spent like all morning trying to find a solution to a problem I'm having with FFXI, although whenever i find a thread or forum with answers its all this nerdy mumbo jumbo i really don't understand lol. All this talk about GeoHurtz and Gigabytes and all this weird stuff, im not a computery person, i can't even print stuff without asking for help.

So i thought i'd just post whats happening in hopes someone can explain in a more... i guess 7th grade reading level. Lol >.>

Anyway, i gave up on doing campaign, because whenever i do campaign i would get my tags, do some stuff, and then after like 30 minutes in my whole screen would just black out for a few seconds before recovering, i'd then get an error message saying "Your display driver has stopped working" and it crashes my game and i get the message "Playonline viewer has stopped working"

Its not just campaign, its always during stuff that involves alot of people and alot of things going on at once, like Dynamis.

It is really frustrating because i would lose like 30 minutes of whatever i just earned in Campaign, because when i log back on i wont have my tags, so i miss out on whatever exp/points i earned.

Pretty frustrating.

I tried googling it and searching forums, but all these really big nnumbers and words i don't understand x_x;

(If it makes any difference at all i play on some laptop that came with Vista, yes get your laughs out, but i had no choice, it was all i could afford)

[Neomage]

Re: Campaign Isn't Even Worth The Trouble Anymore

You can always try to join campaigns with smaller amounts of people, then pull a mob away and solo it. Some good options (at least on Midgardsormr) are:

1) Vunkerl Inlet
2) Garlaige Citadel
3) Crawler's Nest
4) Necropolis
5) Batalia Downs

[MrMageo]

Re: Campaign Isn't Even Worth The Trouble Anymore

I was getting a similar problem, all I did was reduced the amount of charecters displayed and lowerd clipping planes, animations, weather effects etc. I get this problem in besieged as well and the same thing has fixed it. Maybe that will help.

Its all located in the config section of the menu, just lower anything that will require graphics processing it may help in may not no promises.

[Selphiie The Enchantress]

Re: Campaign Isn't Even Worth The Trouble Anymore

I was getting a similar problem, all I did was reduced the amount of charecters displayed and lowerd clipping planes, animations, weather effects etc. I get this problem in besieged as well and the same thing has fixed it. Maybe that will help.

I actually did all of that, and i still have this problem x_x

[Pai Pai Master]

Re: Campaign Isn't Even Worth The Trouble Anymore

Are your video drivers up to date?

[Selphiie The Enchantress]

Re: Campaign Isn't Even Worth The Trouble Anymore

Are your video drivers up to date?

I know im a noob but, how would i go about figuring this out ^^?

I dont know anything about drivers or anything heh ;

[MrMageo]

Re: Campaign Isn't Even Worth The Trouble Anymore

You should be able to do it through windows update I think. Not 100% but I notice every now and then my Auto Update DL's driver updates for video and other things.

[Selphiie The Enchantress]

Re: Campaign Isn't Even Worth The Trouble Anymore

how do i find windows update and what do i do from there o_O? (i know im so helpless lol)

[ItazuraNhomango]

Re: Campaign Isn't Even Worth The Trouble Anymore

Until you get the technical problems worked out, a workaround is to do a performance assessment every so often, then re-obtain allied tags so you'd at least get some experience points and allied notes.

That does require you to be close to the campaign arbiter, so that means popular spots, with lots of people, and not some Altana forsaken place like Garlaige Citadel [S] ... >_>;

[Tickmeoff]

Re: Campaign Isn't Even Worth The Trouble Anymore

Anyway, i gave up on doing campaign, because whenever i do campaign i would get my tags, do some stuff, and then after like 30 minutes in my whole screen would just black out for a few seconds before recovering, i'd then get an error message saying "Your display driver has stopped working" and it crashes my game and i get the message "Playonline viewer has stopped working"

This sounds like you may be putting too much strain on whatever graphics processing unit your laptop has and it's probably over-heating and then shutting down to prevent it from causing any permanent damage.

(which is really strange, I was under the impression that FFXI relied almost completely on processor power for whatever reason)


Doesn't sound like it's a driver problem (especially if it only occurs around a lot of people doing a lot of stuff) but it never hurts to make sure your drivers are up to date. If you had XP and some form of messenger, I could try and help you get all that sorted out, but I don't think I can do much for Vista x_x

[Mhurron]

Re: Campaign Isn't Even Worth The Trouble Anymore

You should be able to do it through windows update I think. Not 100% but I notice every now and then my Auto Update DL's driver updates for video and other things.

Graphics drivers for any card made in the last 5 years on Windows Update are always horribly out of date.

OP: You'll only be able to get a little help from people who can't look at your machine, however a good start would be giving some machine specs.

[Nuriko]

Re: Campaign Isn't Even Worth The Trouble Anymore

And by machine specs, it's every bit of information you can give and then some ... especially about anything video-related, make and model are needed. The more specific a driver you use, the better off you're likely to be...

[Kailea]

Re: Campaign Isn't Even Worth The Trouble Anymore

If your not that good with PCs go here and download then run this software.....
Spec info
It will tell you your system info, take that and post it here, and we should be able to help you better

[Kitalrez]

Re: Campaign Isn't Even Worth The Trouble Anymore

Ok, basics of it is this:

Part of your computer is attempting to draw things on screen for you. The problem you're having is that there's more going on in range than your computer can handle drawing at once. This is overloading it over time and shutting you down.

The first solution, and easiest to handle right now is to do this: Go into the Config menu when you're playing FFXI. Look for a setting labelled "Character Models" under MISC... turn this way down (all the way to the right). Next, go into "Effects". You'll want to spend some time here deciding whether or not you really want certain effects on. Make sure that you turn on the first heading "All Effects during Battle". That'll stop a lot of campaign problems right there. Finally, turn off Shadows and Weather Effects, then start applying chat filters to notices you don't need. If you're an HNMLS player, basically I just walked you through turning on your "raid settings".

Second, to upgrade your video card drivers you can do one of two things. First is to use Windows Update. It should be in your start menu of Windows, or if not, fire up Internet Explorer and see if there's a link to it somewhere in the browser. If all else fails, browse to www.update.microsoft.com and go in that way. If you use the Custom setting, it should tell you about driver updates it has for your card if any. They'll be in the menus on the right under Optional update or software updates, (hardware updates?) Meh, just check em all. Also, keep a lookout here for anything that tells you what brand your card is. Most common are Nvidia and ATI. You'll get a model listing next to it as well, for instance I get listings for "ATI Radeon x800" since that's my card brand and model.

Once you know your card, you can go ahead and do the second driver update, which is to go directly to Nvidia or ATI's websites and start looking for drivers there. Just type them into Yahoo, they're usually the first entry that comes up. (ATI was taken over by AMD within the last year or so, so choose the one with AMD in it). ATI's driver suite is called "Catalyst", and is usually easy to find if you know your card model. I'm not sure what Nvidia's is called, but someone here can probably help. Download and install that package once you are able, (it's almost always a one-click self-install file once you download it). The first driver from Microsoft just updated the bare minimum you needed to make the card work, these drivers will tweak it a little so that it performs better in a gaming environment.


What happens if you have no idea what card you have or what your system specs are? To find any of that, open up the Start menu on WindowsXP and look for a setting that's labelled "Control Panel". If you don't see it, right click the blank area of the start menu, click "Properties" when it shows up, click the "Customize" button, and it should be the first entry there to add it to the menu. From Control Panel, you want to click "Performance and Maintenance", then "System Info". At the very bottom of the first tab of System Info is a listing for Computer. It'll list your processor make and speed in GHZ, and how much RAM you have in GB. For instance, on mine it lists an Intel Pentium 4 CPU 3.00 GHz, 1.50 GB of RAM. To find your card status you could click the "Hardware" tab and then "Device Manager", then look at the heading for "Display Adapters" and check out whatever's in there. Or you could do it the lazy way I prefer and just close this box completely, right click anywhere on the empty desktop, click "Properties", then click the "Settings" tab at the top, followed by "Advanced" and click the "Adapter" tab on that menu. This'll get you to a popup window that tells you what card you have and how much memory the card itself has. "Chip Type" and "Adapter String" is card make/model, "Memory Size" is how much memory that card has. For instance, my "Chip Type" tells me it's an ATI card, "Adapter String" says RADEON x800 PRO/GTO, and "Memory Size" says 256MB.

Now then, if you've followed along, I should've just told you how to give me the following information:

1. What processor do you have and how fast it is in GHz. (Control Panel)
2. How much RAM your system has in GB. (Control Panel)
3. What kind of card you have, make/model. (Display adapter menu)
4. How much onboard memory that card has in MB. (Display adapter menu)

If you can do that, then you can post it here so people more knowledgeable than me can determine if it's your hardware that might be causing the problem.

[Celeal]

Re: Campaign Isn't Even Worth The Trouble Anymore

Have your try to turn off all character's shadows in the game? Shadows rendering in this game can use a lot of resources of your computer.

Next try turn off the PC + NPC names during Campaign battles, if possible.