[Kilazar]

I decided to try and stick it out on the server I am on until I can transfer to the one with my friends...

But I can't seem to stay in the game for more than 10 to 20 minutes without the game full on hard locking my system. It leaves no events in the event viewer, and no blue screen (I have it set to NOT restart on error's) Some times I can stay in for hours. I have no background apps running as this is a fairly fresh vista install.

I have not found alot of info about FF and Vista other than you need the vista pol viewer, which I have. So I am wondering if anyone here know's of anything else I should do?

I've already run a mem test and my ram is fine. I have a slight suspician that something might be over heating, but my temps look fine across the board when I'm outside of FF, and not being able to alt tab to check them while in game, I can't tell if there is a signifigant spike.

Specs

Video Nvidia 6600 GT (only one, so no sli) w/ latest drivers
Mobo Asus P5N32 SLI Deluxe w/ latest bios
CPU P4 Dual Core 2800Mhz
Ram 2 gig Ram (can't remember speed but it matches my mobo's supported specs)


Thanks in advance

[Mhurron]

Vista is not your problem, unless you configured something really wonky. I would start looking at driver issues, ether chipset, sound and/or video card.

[DakAttack]

You know something is overheating if your computer is restarting, and is restarting after having been on for shorter and shorter periods of time.

[Kilazar]

Originally Posted by DakAttack

You know something is overheating if your computer is restarting, and is restarting after having been on for shorter and shorter periods of time.

Thats the thing it's nto shorter and shorter times. when i get home I start up ff, locks after 10 minutes, reboot, I'm on for 5 hours.

It was just yesterday that it locked afte the first 10 minutes, then locked after 20 minutes. That I gave up.

And I already suspected hardware failure, as I have all the latest and correct drivers. I was just hoping maybe I had missed something in vista. I'm thinking video is most likley my problem.


Tell me if you all see something similar. In game everything looks wonderfull, but at certain angles I get a small triangle on the back of my char or wyvern that will fluctuate from being there to not being there, when it is not there I see through to the inside front of my model. It's not really artifacting but it is odd. And I put it down to just the way the game runs in vista.

Has anyone seen that? if not then I'm betting it's my vid card having issues.

[Kasandaro]

Actually, I have seen what you're describing, both the hardlock and the phasing triangles. On my box, they're both video card issues. Not sure exactly what was causing the triangles (just learned to ignore them), but the freezes were from the video card massively overheating.

[Kilazar]

Originally Posted by Kasandaro

Actually, I have seen what you're describing, both the hardlock and the phasing triangles. On my box, they're both video card issues. Not sure exactly what was causing the triangles (just learned to ignore them), but the freezes were from the video card massively overheating.

Okay that was what I was leaning towards. I'll try swapping my video card with my wifes for a couple hours tonight and see if that solves the issue. And if the issue then moves to her box, as she is playing ff as well. If so i know what needs to be done.
------------------------------------------
Come to think of it, the hard locks did come more frequently once I up'ed my resolution to 1280x1024 to match my lcd's native resolution. Thats when I was no longer able to stay online for a couple hours after the first lock.

Thanks for helping me get my thoughts in order on this issue!

[DakAttack]

I had the triangles, but only on my last install. On the my first install on Vista I had absolutely no problems, but on the second and last the triangles came up.

[Balfree]

I'm not saying it IS your video card but this happened to me though not on Vista.

My old card was pretty good and it ran FFXI like a charm, but after a while it started crashing stuff, not just games but videos too. I did all i could, checked drivers, tried multiple of those of multiple developers, cleaned it up good, no dust, got a new fan, yadda yadda, it was still crashing.

Eventually i found that it was simply broken, i tried it on other computers and the same problem would happen, just watching something on youtube would eventually crash it if it was on for long enough.

The card appeared to be really hot even though i had new cooling hardware (fans onry), something was simply screwed with it.

I tried a new card, this time i got me a monster, an ATI Radeon x1950 Super Mega Pro ++ Sayan Super Hyper Power v7 WTF 256mb Yadda-doo-daa and all that jazz.

It ran perfectly for a looong time, then it started happening all over again. But this time, each time it happens i take a gander inside my computer case, and the fans are allways blocked in dust! Both the CPU fan and the VCard Fan! like huge chunks of dust accumulate there every month, its not normal that i've got this much dust in my room.

Anyway, i clean my fans every week. No more crashing. Every little bit of dust gets vaccuumed good.



Yay!

... lol.

[Mhurron]

Originally Posted by Kilazar

Come to think of it, the hard locks did come more frequently once I up'ed my resolution to 1280x1024 to match my lcd's native resolution. Thats when I was no longer able to stay online for a couple hours after the first lock.
Thanks for helping me get my thoughts in order on this issue!

Is FFXI the only game you run on this machine? You might have bad ram on the card but didn't hit it until you started using more memory on it.

[Kilazar]

Actualy oddly enough my wife was playing everquest on my box (read old everquest not eqII) while her box was waiting for a new mobo, and it had similar issues. Locked up the whole system.

But I put that down to eq being not even close to vista compat and honestly I didn't care enough to trouble shoot cause I was not gaming on my system. So I never investigated further. I would downgrade to xp, but I need atleast one box in the house to run vista and this machine and my wifes are the only ones that fit the specs. And she doesn't want it, plus I need access to it alot under vista. So it really needs to be on my system.

So i'm stuck gaming on it. But your guess is close to mine, I'm thinking bad ram, or it's just flat over heating. I haven't looked at it in a while I need to make sure the fan on the heatsink is still runnin as it is about 2 years old now. And I probably need to clean it.

[Endier]

I had a similar problem as well, and it was same as Balfree's problem. If video card exchange doesn't work, I would recommend checking the fan/cooling system on the computer. I don't know if it was mentioned if it was a pc or a laptop, but if it is a laptop I would recommend a cooling dock, usually $5-10 at best buy.

[Kilazar]

PC.

And I'm going to just give it a good cleaning tonight all around to make sure.