No Such Interface Supported error launching FFXI

[Lunaryn]

I spent several hours last night trying to diagnose a system which suddenly stopped being able to run FFXI; POL Viewer crashes with an error dialog saying "No such interface supported." After ruling out certain hardware problems (memory errors, filesystem corruption), I moved on to software. Housecall detected two pieces of "grayware" but the user elected to fix them without taking note of precisely what they were. File checks were performed on POL and FFXI, and I even went as far as to md5sum the entire install and replace a few files that differed slightly from my own install, to no avail.

All the general info on that error says that it's a result of either system file corruption (recommended fix: reinstall Internet Explorer) or DLLs not being properly registered (which DLLs varies depending on what gives the error). Reinstalling IE6 SP1 (Windows 2000 system, IE7 is not supported) did not help, and I regsvr32'd every DLL in POL/FFXI in various orders to no avail. Even a full uninstall and reinstall of POL Viewer didn't help.

Afterward, I narrowed my search for info a bit and found one FFXI-related thread for this issue over on BG: Order of the Blue Gartr • View topic - POL: No such interface supported

Unfortunately, that doesn't provide much that is conclusive or would help resolve things. We didn't pick anything up in virus scan and the system crashed/rebooted (another recent problem which may be hardware-related, but I'm not as willing to rule out software-related now) while trying to run a scan in Spybot S&D.

Relevant details: This is not a Windower problem or a Windowed mode problem, despite the comparative experiences in the listed thread. The same error is obtained regardless of whether FFXI is configured for windowed or fullscreen (I was in VNC so it would have failed either way, but when failing due to VNC the error is a POL error about initializing DirectX, not the "No such interface supported" error dialog). Aside from the unknown "grayware" removed nothing showed up in scans such as the keylogger mentioned in the linked thread (and a keylogger should be categorized as malware, I'd think). (edit: On further examination, it seems "greyware" is Housecall's term for miscellaneous malware...)

At this point I'm about to recommend a complete reinstall of the OS. I would, however, appreciate any further information people may be able to offer regarding this issue.

[Mhurron]

Re: No Such Interface Supported error launching FFXI

It's a DirectX error, you may have a corrupted dll somewhere.

[Celeal]

Re: No Such Interface Supported error launching FFXI

Before you go ahead and re-install Windows, I would suggest you do another error check in the follow way:

1. Run FFXI again, and let it crashes.
2. Open Event Viewer (it is an Administrative Tool from Windows), and from the list of Events, see which ones is related to FFXI or Playonline (or anything you think is related to FFXI). You can see the details by double-click the item or right-click -> properties. Note: You should be able to find Event Viewer from Control Panels -> Administrative Tools -> Event Viewer.
3. Post the *error/warning/info* message you found in here, so that we can see what happened in your system.

[Lunaryn]

Re: No Such Interface Supported error launching FFXI

Update: We've verified that the system was compromised by a keylogger (found smart.dll and lovefly.dll in C:\WINNT\system32 and related registry entries). That's been cleaned out and passwords changed. At the moment FFXI is working, though a few other things are still a bit off.

As far as the system crashing problems, it's looking like that is probably a hardware fault; it seems fairly consistent with a couple different people's experiences with electrical problems in the hard disk. It's fairly new and should still be under warranty, so if we can establish the drive as being at fault, hopefully we can replace that and get things fixed up. If it's not the hard disk, it's probably either the power supply or motherboard...