[DIckyDck]

okie, well since it doesn't seem to be the Norton, btw just triple check you got all of the norton stuff off, under your CCC <Catalyst Control Center> check that you don't have the triple buffering on, or the 24 bit Z-Buffer checked. I tried playing with those and it slowed down my PC considerably while playing FF.Everything is updated I assume. Let me know how that fairs for you.

[Cayde]

Nope, none of that is on for me.

[Ejospike]

Ok I read through most of the forums but I didn't find an answer to my problem and it's like this.

I start playing the game and when I start to fight it might pop-up with an error saying "Playonline has encountered an error and needs to close." Say like when I swing my sword or use Seraph Blade ((Leveling PLD or at least trying to!)). It only started doing this on Windows Vista and not XP so... Any ideas on what I can do? I like my computer itself because it's fast and runs good, but I hate Vista because it won't let me play FFXI.

If anyone can answer my question for me, I'd appreciate it a lot.

[eticket109]

So I have an Acer Extensa 4420 laptop

Vista version of POL. DEP is off except for Windows essentials.

Avast AV, ATI Radeon Xpress 1250, Vista Home Premium, Aero is off

POL loads fine, I can log into FFXI fine.

However, ~30 sec after logging on I get "Playonline Viewer has stopped working"

Any ideas on where to start looking for the cause?

[Mhurron]

Personally I'd lean toward blaming drivers for the past two posters.

[xXMalevolentXx]

Did anyone solve the choppiness issue? I did some google searching, found lots of people with the issue, but no solution

I have the same problem, the game plays for 2 seconds, pauses for a moment, then continues, over and over and over and over and....

I have a Dell D820 with an Nvidia Quadro NVS 110M video card (laptop)

On XP, it plays flawlessly. I even upgraded the RAM from 2GB to 4GB

I've tried putting in the min settings - 640x480 res, 256x256 texture, compressed stuff, etc, and it still happens.

I've tried numerous nvidia drivers, even the 169.17 International version supposedly made for FFXI - all with same problem.

It's my work laptop, so I'm kind of stuck with Vista.

[Mhurron]

Quadro cards suck at games, and then you're compounding the problems using Vista.

169.17 aren't Quadro drivers, what ever fixes that are included in 169.17 may be in areas of code the Quadro doesn't care about.

[xXMalevolentXx]

It's not my main gaming rig, it's just for when I'm on the road.

Nvidia drivers are pretty much universal, they use the same driver for all nvidia cards, you just need to modify them to get them to work

more details: ForceWare Updater's Quickstart Guide - nVision

so you can use any driver version for any nvidia card.

I think I'll just setup a small xp partition for FFXI, and dual boot, I just need to figure out how to do it with Bitlocker installed.

[Mhurron]

Drivers are pretty much universal, the physical hardware is pretty much universal (ie you have a card that is essentially a GeForce Go 7300) but the cards BIOS and therefore what features are on or off and exactly how it executes things are different between a GeForce and a Quadro. A fix aimed at the GeForce may or may not apply to a Quadro.

If they weren't no one would buy a Quadro and just use the latest gaming card for work.

[sagrav84]

From reading over and over again and experiencing a lot of problems also with Vista here is what I think... First.. If you have problems running FFXI and POL on your computer... just reinstall windows because you screwed bad or get the latest version of it.
Now the main problem here is that FFXI lags whenever you get other players on screen (with mobs is all fine). I am pulling now 2 theories out of this, because graphics is not, because the video is fine as all have seen. My theories are:

1. Caused by the network protection or anything that Vista has about it (due the S and R rates)
2. What version of FFXI are you using to install.

Regarding 1, I heave read some threads that receive just gets to a certain limit so there can be something wrong on Vista regarding online gaming... but strange because WoW should have the same thing and it doesn't, (Dell sells WoW computer with Vista and works perfectly).

And regarding 2, I think pretty much of us are using Vana Collection 2007, which is as to say so the one that all of us are using because is more up to date. I came up this, because I read some guys that installed it using the CD version (the first one) and its working fine. I am thinking that the older one works better since it gets all the updates directly downloaded and this can cause it to work. But to know better we need to know... what media are you using... the old CDs or the DVD? (Doesn't matter with WoTG because is not included in the DVD)

[Kinder]

Originally Posted by xXMalevolentXx

Did anyone solve the choppiness issue? I did some google searching, found lots of people with the issue, but no solution

I have the same problem, the game plays for 2 seconds, pauses for a moment, then continues, over and over and over and over and....

I have a Dell D820 with an Nvidia Quadro NVS 110M video card (laptop)

On XP, it plays flawlessly. I even upgraded the RAM from 2GB to 4GB

I've tried putting in the min settings - 640x480 res, 256x256 texture, compressed stuff, etc, and it still happens.

I've tried numerous nvidia drivers, even the 169.17 International version supposedly made for FFXI - all with same problem.

It's my work laptop, so I'm kind of stuck with Vista.

I have exactly the same issue on Vista 32 bit .

Q6850
8800 Ultra (SLI)
4g of RAM
300 gig Raptor RAID 0
Sb live audigy
linksys wireless network adapter

Kinder

[sagrav84]

Originally Posted by Kinder

Originally Posted by xXMalevolentXx
Did anyone solve the choppiness issue? I did some google searching, found lots of people with the issue, but no solution

I have the same problem, the game plays for 2 seconds, pauses for a moment, then continues, over and over and over and over and....

I have a Dell D820 with an Nvidia Quadro NVS 110M video card (laptop)

On XP, it plays flawlessly. I even upgraded the RAM from 2GB to 4GB

I've tried putting in the min settings - 640x480 res, 256x256 texture, compressed stuff, etc, and it still happens.

I've tried numerous nvidia drivers, even the 169.17 International version supposedly made for FFXI - all with same problem.

It's my work laptop, so I'm kind of stuck with Vista.

I have exactly the same issue on Vista 32 bit .

Q6850
8800 Ultra (SLI)
4g of RAM
300 gig Raptor RAID 0
Sb live audigy
linksys wireless network adapter

Kinder

If you are reading the posts... We know of the problem... We are trying to find a solution... The problem is not the computer (hardware), the problem here is the software... so please POST interesting things on the software, no just over and over again that computer works fine in XP, all computers run fine FFXI on XP, the problem here is Vista....

[Kinder]

Originally Posted by sagrav84

If you are reading the posts... We know of the problem... We are trying to find a solution... The problem is not the computer (hardware), the problem here is the software... so please POST interesting things on the software, no just over and over again that computer works fine in XP, all computers run fine FFXI on XP, the problem here is Vista....

The problem isnt just vista related, I have another vista PC and with the 169.17 drivers nvidia drivers the game works fine. So maybe this isnt interesting for you but I was just throwing out another configuration out there so perhaps we can touch common ground and work out the issue.

Wow first post and someone decides to slam me.

[sagrav84]

Originally Posted by Kinder

The problem isnt just vista related, I have another vista PC and with the 169.17 drivers nvidia drivers the game works fine. So maybe this isnt interesting for you but I was just throwing out another configuration out there so perhaps we can touch common ground and work out the issue.

Wow first post and someone decides to slam me.

And the question is... what disks did you use to install FFXI? And also if you are telling if the problem is not Vista... how comes that a lot of people have problems with Vista and not XP??? Of course the problem is Vista and what we are here for is solve the problem... which is Vista compatibility with the game.

[xXMalevolentXx]

Originally Posted by sagrav84

From reading over and over again and experiencing a lot of problems also with Vista here is what I think... First.. If you have problems running FFXI and POL on your computer... just reinstall windows because you screwed bad or get the latest version of it.
Now the main problem here is that FFXI lags whenever you get other players on screen (with mobs is all fine). I am pulling now 2 theories out of this, because graphics is not, because the video is fine as all have seen. My theories are:

1. Caused by the network protection or anything that Vista has about it (due the S and R rates)
2. What version of FFXI are you using to install.

Regarding 1, I heave read some threads that receive just gets to a certain limit so there can be something wrong on Vista regarding online gaming... but strange because WoW should have the same thing and it doesn't, (Dell sells WoW computer with Vista and works perfectly).

And regarding 2, I think pretty much of us are using Vana Collection 2007, which is as to say so the one that all of us are using because is more up to date. I came up this, because I read some guys that installed it using the CD version (the first one) and its working fine. I am thinking that the older one works better since it gets all the updates directly downloaded and this can cause it to work. But to know better we need to know... what media are you using... the old CDs or the DVD? (Doesn't matter with WoTG because is not included in the DVD)

I don't think that reinstalling Vista/POL is the fix. It's not exactly rocket science installing this stuff, and it's happening to quite a lot of people.

You are having a different issue, we get choppiness, it starts pretty much at the Accept/Decline screen, when FFXI goes into it's fullscreen/windowed mode, and never stops. It does it at the char select screen, in the mog house, etc, etc. Some people have said the Nvidia 169.17 International drivers have helped thier lag issue (the issue you have, not us) so maybe give that a shot if you have an nvidia card.

I'm using the original install disks - FFXI+Zilart, then CoP expansion, then ToAU expansion, then WotG expansion. I even tried deinstalling the expansions one by one, then testing FFXI to see if a certain expansion was causing the issue, but it happened no matter.

It's definately a Vista problem, but not sure with what - maybe certain processors, motherboards, chipsets, video cards, etc, etc.