Keeps Crashing

[heartofalion28]

The game keeps crashing just randomly i dont understand why. Does anyone else have this problem? I dont get and error or anything just crashes sometimes 10 minutes of playtime sometime and hour and a half.

Comp specs:
Pentium 4 3.0 Prescott (Water Cooled)
Abit AG8 mobo
1 GB pqi (2 x 512)
250 GB Western Digital
BFG 7800GTX OC
w/ XP SP2

Lion

[Darkages]

Re: Keeps Crashing

bc ur rich and dont deserve to play........
i mean proble bc ur useing a windower or u shoudl just restart ur computer bc it does it to me somethings

[Taskmage]

Re: Keeps Crashing

Don't spam, please. -_- If you can't help this guy, don't post.

[Pyroweaver]

Re: Keeps Crashing

How much free space you have on your hard drive??
you should keep about 700+mb free for games but i dont have the comp version so im not positive.

[heartofalion28]

Re: Keeps Crashing

60 Gb

[Taskmage]

Re: Keeps Crashing

Does it lock up, crash to the desktop, or default to the POL viewer?

[heartofalion28]

Re: Keeps Crashing

crash to the desktop

[Kitalrez]

Re: Keeps Crashing

Ok, before we do anything yet: Are the random DC's to desktop accompanied by a
Playonline Error 4001 or something close when you log back on? Because a lot of us are getting that one already, and S-E has stated they'll be working on it for a future patch. If not...


Well, here's a number of things to get out of the way first:

1. Defragment your hard drive or the partition of the drive that FFXI is currently occupying. (This sounds silly, but I noticed a lot less disconnects lately since I defragged, and this is even with that 4001 error from POL everyone else is crashing on).

2. Run error check from the same part of windows just to be safe.

If both these two don't fix the problem, then you've ruled out most of the system related errors and can move on to individual files.

3. Are you running windower? If so, make sure you're using the shortcut that comes with windower, and not the original FFXI shortcut. These two shortcuts no longer play nice together if both are on the same machine.

4. If you tried windower, then changed your mind at the last minute and uninstalled it, you still have the hook.dll file instructions somewhere on your drive and will probably want to reinstall FFXI to get rid of it.

In any case, should you decide to go down this route and have already spent the time patching, do the following:
a. Go through your Playonline Folder, find the folder relating just to FFXI, (I.E. not the smaller folders containing Playonline files, this will be a mamoth sized folder that displays Final Fantasy XI on it and contains massive amounts of subfolders).

b. Copy everything in that file, all subfolders, etc. and put them in a dummy folder somewhere else. (You can even name a folder on your hard drive "Dummy" and stash them there if you like).

c. Reinstall FFXI, but don't go online to patch it. (Otherwise you'll get stuck with another six hours of patching or the like).

d. As soon as you're reinstalled, go back to that dummy folder and move all your files back into PlayOnline's folders. Overwriting as necessary. This will copy over all the newly patched sound, behavior, and video files so you don't have to redo that process. Playonline will then start up as regular, ask you for your ID and Password (God help you if you didn't follow the promts and write it down in the manual), then check the files and patch a few minor PoL ones.

*For Future Reference* Should you ever decide to move FFXI to another computer or try to get your friend playing and want to skip patching, you can also burn those files onto a few CDs and cut out a few hours worth of patching.

If you try all this and are still getting problems, try this thread again, it's probably a router/connection issue, and I don't know how to solve that.

[Kittyneko]

Re: Keeps Crashing

I guess he answered everything.. from my experience, I can say it could be the videocard though. Make sure it gets enough cooling. I bought a cheap Ati Radeon 9550 SE without any cooler/van on it, and it worked fine no matter how long I left my PC on, but when on FFXI, it crashed my whole PC after a matter of minutes. I don't have this Ati Radeon 9800 Pro with build-on Cooler.
Also, various PC-experts who I asked this to, told me that it might be because my videocard didn't get enough power.

With you, only FFXI crashes though. Might be because your graphics card is not compatible? Do you have the latest drivers?

Edit: with videocard I mean graphics card.

[heartofalion28]

Re: Keeps Crashing

lol i dont think my 7800GTX is crashing cuz FFXI is taxing it to much lol ill try the defrag. Not sure what a windower is maybe an explanation would help umm i am not sure what error i get it jsut says i didnt logout correctly when i go back into it.

Lion

[bside]

Re: Keeps Crashing

video card overheating usually results in the game to freeze for a moment, then work, then freeze again, and so on, or just completely freeze. crashing directly back to desktop without any error is in most cases due to either CPU, memory, or software including drivers.


the first possible problem that crossed my head is that since ur CPU is water-cooled, u may be relying on it too much to secure the good airflow within ur system, resulting in the memory to be overheating, thus while it may appear to be working fine, it's not. for this i recommend to run a memtest86, after running the system for some long time.

also, if ur water-cooler is a cheap one, it might not be cooling the CPU just enough. i assume that it's cooling it fine as far as other, non-ffxi usage is concerned, but that doesn't have to mean it's cooled enough to run ffxi. i used to use AthlonXP of the Thunderbird core, famous for its heat problem, and while it ran everything besides ffxi just fine, ffxi crashed from time to time, just like ur case. and this problem went away after i switched to the Barton core.

and if u happen to be using the PSX-USB converter from Radioshack, be aware that the same kind of problems have been reported a number of times. i believe if u search this forum u'll be able to find what others have done to resolve them.


this is as much as i can think of right now. good luck.

[heartofalion28]

Re: Keeps Crashing

i dont think its a memory problem but i will try that program. I have 2 12cm fans and 18cm fans running besides the one on my radiator and i have heat spreaders on my ram. I can run CS source full settings F.E.A.R. high settings and i dont have a crashing problem but i will try that prog thank you.


Lion

[Bricklayer]

Re: Keeps Crashing

My spec:

Pentium 805 D
Asus P5ND2-SLi mobo
1 GB DDR2-667 (1 x 1024)
250 GB Western Digital
Albatron 7600GT
XP SP2

Same problem as you, and it really makes the game hard to play (constant crashing when PT'ing, especially as WHM... *sigh*). I installed windower, and switched back and forth (windowed/non-windowed) to try to see if one worked better than the oher... Crashes either way. Maybe I'll try what one of the above posters suggested. I hate to have to reinstall, but...