FFXI will not open

Wanted to come back for the Return campaign. Haven't logged in in a while. So I ran the update and tried to login, it would go like it's going to run the game, then POL closes, then opens right back up as if I just logged in. If I try to run FFXI again, it again closes POL and opens it back as if I just logged in. Stuck in a loop.

So I uninstalled and reinstalled fresh from the FFXI website, no third parties (no reason to, I have all content tied to my SE ID).

Now, when I try to boot POL, nothing happens. But my task manager says it's open. So I have to open POL a SECOND time to login. Whatever. Minor inconvenience. Now when I try to run FFXI, it freezes for a solid two minutes, then closes like it's going to boot the game, then it just doesn't do anything. It stays closed. FFXI does not pop up in my task manager but it still says POL is running. If I try to reopen POL nothing happens until I forcibly end the process from task manager and reopen. But it does the same thing. When trying to run FFXI (by hitting "Play"), it freezes for a couple minutes, closes, and nothing happens. Let it sit for a solid hour while I walked half a mile to go pay a bill and come back home. Nothing.

Running Windows 7 on a laptop, have been able to play fine ALWAYS in the past, but for some reason this is happening now. Direct X is up to date. Have done complete uninstall and reinstall. Have done forced file check and repair. No external programs (like Windower). Allowed permission through antivirus and firewall and even completely disabled them to see if it would work. Same thing. Then did an uninstall and reinstall with antivirus and firewall completely disabled and updated and the same thing happens.

I've been on this since just before 9am. It is now past 3pm. I'm at a loss.

I was going to ask if you had enabled legacy components in "turn features on or off" but that's actually a windows 8/10 thing, not windows 7. So I really don't know.

FFXI should work under windows 7 without doing anything special, but you could try using compatibility mode for an older OS by going to the properties for the POL executable.

Already tried compatibility mode and run as admin

Is this one of those laptops with dual graphics from Intel and NVIDIA? I've seen some reports with regards to forcing the application to use one of them, but I'm not too clear on the details at this time.

I've personally not used Windows since 2010 (all Gentoo Linux here), so most of this does not take into consideration any new 'tricks' Windows may have learned with regards to FFXI, but I do remember some things really not playing well with it.

One such thing is the dim effect related to the UAC (maybe only with the Aero effects enabled?). If it's enabled, I'd suggest experimenting with disabling it (maybe even completely, but at the very least the dim business). Disabling it completely actually may have helped a friend, even though the prompt wasn't being triggered, or they didn't tell me it was (I couldn't actually see it to be sure).

Other things to maybe try: disable the opening movie, and switch to windowed mode if using fullscreen currently (FFXI still doesn't like it if it loses focus while in fullscreen mode; sometimes it doesn't like it even in windowed mode, but that was probably a Wine related issue I'm thinking of, not something happening under native Windows environment...).

Also try to think of anything that has possibly changed since the last time you played. Windows updates and graphics card drivers are probably almost a given, though rolling back only the latter will probably be feasible.

It's worth noting that these are things based on previous experiences on issues that don't exactly match your description, and are mostly directed at the description of this particular issue before the re-install, since things seem to have changed a little after that.

The fact that you need to launch 'pol' twice seems very odd indeed, and shouldn't even be possible as long as I remember correct-like (the first launch probably doesn't get far enough to block the second one, but I can imagine it still confusing things later on). So with the current description, I'd try to troubleshoot launching the PlayOnline Viewer first and to get that back to normal operation.

If you terminate the first process before launching a second one, does it still not open up? You probably already tried the Windows favourite of restarting the machine, and trying to see if it happens the same way after a fresh boot.

It does seem an awful lot like something an anti-virus or similar software is messing up, but those were already disabled, so that theory is quite out...

Down the list file system issues come to mind, but then you might be noticing other stuff acting weird as well. Not sure if there's a better way on Windows now than running 'chkdsk', but if/when all else fails, I might try installing the game on a different HDD/SDD\other, if possible.

I do remember seeing the "it would go like it's going to run the game, then POL closes, then opens right back up" happen myself, but I can't remember the details. Again, it may very well have been a Wine specific issue. It may also have had something to do with the game itself not being properly installed yet (just PlayOnline Viewer was).

I hope these thoughts will at least help narrow down the issue. There's more than I initially intended to write down, but oh well. Shouldn't hurt at least. :]