Strange freezing issue, but only with FFXI (new graphics card, driver issue?)

Details:
I recently installed a new graphics card, a Radeon HD 6950, and it's fantastic! Except with FFXI, where after about 30 minutes of play it will freeze my computer and generate a very nasty buzzing sound from my speakers, disallowing any input whatsoever and requiring a hard restart. This only ever seems to occur with FFXI. My drivers have been updated, and subsequently replaced with older drivers to test with, and the issue continues to occur. Even stranger, the freeze seems to only happen either in Abyssea zones, or during combat (i'm not sure which might be the cause; the only time I've noticed this happening has been in both Abyssea, and in combat-- I've "afk" tested by just sitting in non-combat zones like the Mog House, Jeuno, and San d'Oria, as well as afking in Abyssea doing absolutely nothing and lasting the entire 120 minutes with no issues... but if I've been fighting for a while, then the freeze occurs).

I would like to add that after tonight's freeze, I started playing around with keeping other programs on (in this case, Steam) with FFXI running in the background behind them, playing under the same conditions that would cause my system to freeze (in Abyssea, party in combat) , and it seemed to have an effect after about an hour (no freeze for twice the typical length of gameplay).
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Steps (most recent experiences):
1. Entered Abyssea - Vunkerl, walking around after having fought Gruesome Gargouilles for a short time (15-30 minutes), system freeze.
2. Entered Abyssea - Vunkerl, AFK'd at entrance with 120 minutes of time, no issues whatsoever.
3. Entered Abyssea - Altepa, fought Camelopardalis for a short time (20-30 minutes), system freeze (this happened tonight).
4. Re-entered Abyssea - Altepa, exact same scenario as before but with FFXI running in the background: no issues for the duration.

Date & Time: 10/13/2011, 20:15 EST (8:15 PM EST)

Frequency: Approximately every half hour or so, unknown exact conditions (possibly combat related, possibly an issue with Abyssea zones, possibly a combination of them?)

Platform: PC

PC Manufacturer & Model Number: Homebuilt Computer

OS: Windows 7 64-bit

Graphics Card: Radeon HD 6950

ISP: Comcast

Type of Internet Connection: Cable
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I'm really at a loss of what to do about this! Could it be my card is just bad?

Hi,
I'm having exactly the same issue except i have the radeon HD 6970. I can run any other game without issue but as soon as i run FF11 it locks up. I dont have the Abyssea yet but still am having freezing problems. Mine has never been in combat its ussually when im runing round looking for things to kill

Any ideas anyone


Platform: PC

PC Manufacturer & Model Number: Homebuilt Computer

OS: Windows 7 64-bit

Graphics Card: Radeon HD 6970

Akuramini,

First off, please note that we have not confirmed compatibility on any Radeon HD cards newer than the 6800 series, as detailed on the Official PlayOnline website, so we’re not able to guarantee perfect performance on your card. That being said, if your hardware itself is locking up entirely, to the extent that you need to actually restart your computer, that’s more indicative of a hardware issue, than anything software related. FINAL FANTASY XI may be triggering this failure, but it’s still a hardware failure, be it the power supply, motherboard, video card, or any other integral part of your hardware. Since that is the case, we can only recommend proceeding with hardware troubleshooting, contacting the hardware manufacturers for support.

Details:
Same issue here. PC freezes, locks up my system, noise thru my speakers. For me it happens in and out of abyssea.

Steps Taken:
I am a PC tech and have run full hardware Dio on my system using the dell hardware dio and the PC doctor Dio kit and found no probs so I went to the good old INTERNET to see it's not just me, its other ATI players as well. I have read post of ppl performing a clean install of just windows, FFXI and ATI drivers and still getting the same probs.
I recently uninstalled virus protection on the PC to see if it would solve the issue but haven't tested it cause I'm just playing on my other PC till SE accepts something is wrong and the probs go away.
I have played with my drivers a little recently in an attempt to get FFXIV working better. Seems I will have to go back a few drivers if i want to play FFXI again on my best rig, making FFXIV suck, again, so I won't. I'll play on my other PC that also rips the system requirements of this game to shame, runs on nVidia but still seems to have in game framrate issues of it's own.

Date and Time:
I can tell you that I have been playing on this PC about 8 months now and never have had a problem up until last 2 weeks. Since last update, It's been freezing more often.

Platform: PC

PC Manufacturer & Model Number: Alienware AREA51 ALX i7

OS: Windows 7 64-bit

Graphics Cards: 2 Radeon HD 6970s in CrossfireX

ISP: Comcast

Type: CATV

The game does seem to run better on nVidia cards than ATI. Having previously been running a Radeon 4870X2 I did have a few issues with FFXI, now I'm using nVidia again and I don't have any issues running FFXI (new 500 series card too).

Neekz, I think running cards in CFX can cause issues too. SLI/CF still aren't perfect and can cause issues with such an old game. My 4870X2 was a dual-gpu card that ran in Crossfire, I think that was the cause of some of my issues with XI.

Thanks Nemster, It's possable that may be the new drivers are running the croosfire and the old one I had was not, had not thought of that. I guess I am going to have to try to force it off, play on one GPU, and then I'll post what I find here.
Akuramini Have you had any luck trying to solve this or are you still in the same spot?

NEED ANSWER WHY DOES THIS HAPPEN

I too am having this issue Ive tried multiple thing to resolve this issue I have a pretty high end computer
just happen less 2 min ago<10:30pm EST.> again i was in The "Boyahda Tree" killing steelshell to do some skilling dagger and it just keep locking up my computer sometimes 10mins other 30mins it would lock up and i cant do anything but reset the PC

Ive tried checking for registry key error missing .ddl files reinstalling the game on my regular hard drive instead of ssd changing bios on my graphics card and going to an older set of drivers and still keep happening the funny thing is that this just started happening it hasn't happen before the first time it happen i was in SKY killing seiryu and just froze up lucky i mange to kill him before it happen or i would have been pissed I am getting really sick of having to reset my PC every time that isnt good for my PC i need a solution to this please i really like this game ive been playing on and off for more then 7+ years i really would hate to have to stop.
AMD x6 1090t
x2 OCZ SSD 60Gig
Corsair Vengence Ram 8gig
XFX ATI HD 6950
Asus formula 4 mobo
WD 1.5tb traditional hard drive

And this is not a Hardware Issue your game in causing this saying it a hard issue is just pointing the finger at the other guys because we don't want to admit fault do give me that Ive tested all my hard component and its the game because why doesn't happen when playing other game such as MW3 or battlefield Batman Arkham city even older game run just fine because i play Command and conquer Yuri revenge 2 all the time as-well with no issue please just look into this it obvious that if more the one person is having that same problem it must be your software don't forget we are all pay customers here and we need a better answer the its a Hard issue because its not. BTW Ive spent 3hours on the phone with ATI just to have them tell me its a Software issue and i run 2 6950 and i tried both of them separate and together and same thing freeze's

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Fumetsu

And this is not a Hardware Issue your game in causing this saying it a hard issue is just pointing the finger at the other guys because we don't want to admit fault do give me that Ive tested all my hard component and its the game because why doesn't happen when playing other game such as MW3 or battlefield Batman Arkham city even older game run just fine because i play Command and conquer Yuri revenge 2 all the time as-well with no issue please just look into this it obvious that if more the one person is having that same problem it must be your software don't forget we are all pay customers here and we need a better answer the its a Hard issue because its not. BTW Ive spent 3hours on the phone with ATI just to have them tell me its a Software issue and i run 2 6950 and i tried both of them separate and together and same thing freeze's

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It's not the game or the hardware, it's the drivers. FFXI has a peculiar way of using DirectX, and most older drivers have been tuned to work with this. The way I understand it, newer videocards aren't designed to work with old DirectX versions, so they emulate those older versions, and if something goes wrong there, it goes wrong at a very deep level, which means it's unlikely for the PC to exit gracefully and the whole thing just locks up.
I get the exact same freeze problem from time to time (very irregular), but always when I have other stuff running (such as Firefox with YouTube paused in one of the tabs.)

Hey all, is there any update on this? I'm losing my mind trying to figure it out and a workaround would justify many pizzas being delivered to your doorstep.

I reactivated about three months now and have been having a really terrible time with the sporadic freezes. I'm still running on XP and had a Radeon HD 5770 but, assuming the video card was the issue, I upgraded to a Radeon HD 6870 and am still having the problem.

Here's the behavior I experience under Windows XP:

My computer randomly freezes while playing FFXI. By "freeze," I mean the last image on the display remains, the mouse and keyboard become unresponsive and sometimes I get the "CD skipping" type audio artifacts. I have to reboot when this happens.

This has happened as frequently as five times in one day and as infrequently as once in three days with the game running the whole time. The fastest it's happened is about 3 minutes after rebooting and logging back into the game. It's risky for me to do just about anything in the game that requires pops since I never know when I'm going to have to reboot and I've been screwed by this several times now.

Also, it doesn't appear to be dependent on the zone or what I'm doing. I've had many freezes while bazaaring in Jeuno, freezes while fighting NMs in Abyssea, freezes in Dynamis, in my mog house, etc

Things I've tried:

- Disabling most background programs
- Closing Firefox before playing
- Disabling power saver modes
- Updating to the lastest XP patches
- Updating my video card drivers
- Cleaning out my machine and replacing the thermal compound
- Buying a new video card, as shown above
- Inspecting the motherboard for bulging or leaking capacitors (none found)
- Inspecting admin log for errors but there is no trace of this problem when it happens
- Inspecting heat sensors -- everything is running well within tolerances
- Down-clocking my machine from 9 to 6 (which makes it very sluggish)
- Replacing my PSU (another $100 down the drain due to this problem)
- Upgrading my chipset
- Hopelessly tweaking various bios settings multiple times
- Running spyware/virus detection software (spybot, adaware, AVG)
- Removing anti-virus software (AVG)
- Using different RAM entirely

The list really goes on and on-- I'm sure I've forgotten some things as I have been battling this problem for three months now. Every time I think I have a bright idea, I get slapped in the face with another extremely frustrating freeze.

If it's actually a hardware problem, then the only remaining things I have to change are the CPU and the motherboard but both are quality components and relatively new, so I'm dubious. I could also upgrade to Windows 7. But this thread and several others on the internet give me little hope that all of that trouble would actually get me anywhere.

This thread has given me the idea to try disabling most of the options in my video card settings and I'll try this next, but man, it really does seem like FFXI is at fault here. I haven't had this problem while playing other games, including The Witcher, Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3 Beta. It started when playing FFXI and so far has only occurred while playing FFXI in three months time.

Any advice would be most welcome.

Thankyou.

Forget the exact details on card and driver set, etc.... but seem to recall there were some similar issues tied to the Catalyst AI getting in the way on the Xfire cards in the past. Have you tried turning it down (or off)?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by RAIST

Forget the exact details on card and driver set, etc.... but seem to recall there were some similar issues tied to the Catalyst AI getting in the way on the Xfire cards in the past. Have you tried turning it down (or off)?

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RadeonPro reported Catalyst AI as disabled but CCC had the "Enable Surface Format Optimization" option checked within the Catalyst AI settings box, so I've disabled that and will report back the next time I freeze or in three days or so if miraculously this did the trick.

Thanks!

It froze again last night with Catalyst AI completely disabled. Lasted about 24 hours so I was starting to get my hopes up. I read in another thread somewhere that a guy had luck just turning everything to either max or "application controlled" so I'm trying that now...

I am also having the same problem. I took a break from FFXI 6-7 months ago and had to put up with this crashing for 2-3 months. I recently came back and I am still experiencing the crashing. I couldn't find anyone that had a similar problem back then and now I see I'm not the only one. And it only happens with FFXI too.

I also have an HD 6970 so that does appear to be the culprit.

I was wondering if anyone in this thread happened to solve it?

Hi guys,

I managed to solve this problem by reinstalling the Realtek Audio drivers using the official Realtek drivers rather than the ones that came with my motherboard.

Go to the link here: http://www.realtek.com/downloads/dow...&GetDown=false

Download the appropriate one for your version of windows and hopefully it solves it ^^

GL!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Dethevn

Hi guys,

I managed to solve this problem by reinstalling the Realtek Audio drivers using the official Realtek drivers rather than the ones that came with my motherboard.

Go to the link here: http://www.realtek.com/downloads/dow...&GetDown=false

Download the appropriate one for your version of windows and hopefully it solves it ^^

GL!

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I am also having this problem and no way is it my hardware,i am going to download the realtek driver and see if that works also u can run steam as administrator and run it in vista or xp mode but that is at your own risk.Back to my point my hardware is fiiiiine i thinks its the ffxi that is outdated, and to blame my sweet baby of a machine instead of fix fatal flaws in your code shame on u SE.I play FF14 and SWTOR and BF3 for marathon hours and not 1 issue so dont give me the "It must be your pc" cuz its not its your code

Wow, so much time had passed that I gave up even looking at this thread.

I'm still suffering from this problem but now I'm like the abused child who just comes to accept it. Every couple of weeks, I'll have 2~3 days with no freeze, but most days it freezes multiple times. Today was three times. I've pretty much lost my mind.

Regarding the RealTek drivers, that's interesting, although one of the many things I tried while trying to debug this ridiculousness was disabling all of the onboard sound drivers on my motherboard and freezes still occurred. I got the idea that it may have something to do with sound because one of the times it froze, my sound skipped like a broken record-- but that only ever happened once out of the gajillion times that it's frozen now.

I'll give it a shot, though. Thanks!

I am having this issue as well except i am using dual raedon hd 5870 cards pc is custom built windows 7 comcast cable 50 mb+ 8 gb ram 500 gb sata hard drive with a 4 tb add on hard drive

Froze. :/ Updated RealTek's high definition audio drivers as well as AC'97. The OP's issue is slightly different than mine though so perhaps that would work for some folks...

I've installed a Sapphire Radeon HD 6950 into my PC for smoother graphics, and lately i've been getting the exact same issue here. It even happened when I was trading my byne bills to the goblin in Beadeaux.

Would anyone happen to know if there's a hotfix for it yet?

Been using a HD6970 since October and I've been having the same freezing problem. I haven't found any fixes for it and the only way I can play for a while without freezing is to turn off all effects but I still get random freezes.

Hello,

I too am experiencing the same issues that everyone else is having and with similar setups. I am running a 6970 Radeon as well, and have the exact same symptoms. Its sad that SE's stance is 'well we dont support ATI's and its your hardware problem.' There are basically two chipset options in the video card world and they chose not to support one of them????

This is one of the worst experiences of online support from any modern company I've had to endure. First destrier beret, now unsupported hardware (what year is this?) and now to find out that they basically don't have the online resources to support their game. From talking with past players they are basically notorious for their lack of support which makes perfect sense because they used to make offline / single player games pretty exclusively.

Lesson learned.

It's not that they don't support ATI...the older cards and drivers work just fine. It's more an issue with the shift that Microsoft took in API's with Window Vista/7. These newer OS's are built around DX10/11, and anything older runs via a sort of emulation. The newer cards and their drivers are built around this API as well (since late 2009, both ATI and nVidia have been built with full DX11 native support).

The issue lies in the drivers for the newer cards (post Q3 2009) and DirectX in Windows Vista/7 not being able to work well with the archaic DX 8.1/9 half-breed that is FFXI. Other older games have suffered issues as well because they are using these older interfaces. Need to go to the card's manufacturer to get drivers fixed.

So will compatibility mode do anything for this kind of issue? Its really hampering my ability to play and downgrading my card is not really an option for me.

A quick search on the ATI support site gave me a hit on the 12.1 drivers...supposed to have a fix for Windows7 users of DX9 mode in Dirt2, amongst other fixes. Perhaps it will address issues for FFXI as well.

http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles...ersion121.aspx

Ulitmateily, this is where you will need to go for help on these newer cards--the card manufacturers need to fix their drivers for DirectX backwards compatability in Vista/Win7. That is the problem, how the drivers are working with the older DirectX.

All SE can really do to remedy that is to change how they implemented DirectX...as in a rewrite of the wrapper. Don't expect that to happen anytime soon. It MIGHT be tweaked when SoA comes out, who knows...at any rate it would be a big change and will take some time to pull off, if they plan to do it.

I am also one who has HD6970 with very similar PC configuration as the original poster.
Alienware Aurora R2
I7 860 @ 2.8 Ghz
8GB DDR3 Ram
Windows 7 64 bits

Strange that before I came back was using HD 5800 series and instead of complete freeze, PoL simply crashed with the Display driver stopped responding error. I have so far tried a few methods with no avail:

- Disable HTT from Bios
- Disable Weather/Shadow from ingame
- Disabled all effects from game
- Tested Drivers 12.4, 12.6, 12.7beta, 11.2(!), it all gave same results
- Updated Realtek HD audio drivers to the latest.
- DIsabled Realtek HD audio, and used HDMI cable instead of VGA
- Changed CCC configuration to max compatibility and disabled AMD Overdrive

None of these worked. The freezes are also quite random and freezes on random areas. Someimes it froze in the first 30minuites, others lasted for 5 hours. Sometimes no issue for 6 hours straight. Strange thing is that my 2nd PC is also running on i7 with Radeon card. However its a laptop. It has HD 4870 and using a very very old driver, I think its catalyst 8 something. Now its not even funny have to roll back that far and I don't think those drivers are compatible with the 6000 series and up.

Lastly, the game doesn't seem to freeze when you are idle. It happened to me when I was moving around, fighting etc. at this rate it can and probably will damage my rig and I will probably be forced to quit the game because of it. It may not be an issue today, but with the new expansions and more people upgrading their PC it will be a problem for future players if SE doesn't do anything. (Doubt AMD will move since its one game out of many)

Enoah, I am experiencing the same exact things as you with a similar system, tho I am running AMD hardware. I've tried a lot of your troubleshooting steps as well. I submitted a report to AMD via their website and I encourage you to do the same, the more reports the better!!! This will help other games and gamers out greatly if there is enough demand! Submit your report here - http://www.amdsurveys.com/se.ashx?s=5A1E27D20B2F3EC4

I filled out mine as completely as possible and I encourage you to do the same!

Yes I already done my feedback a while back. Will probably do again. Would like to ask people what cards are stable since it seems both Geforce and ATI cards are experiencing issues, specially those cards that are newer than what Square Enix got on their compatibility list. I had to pull out my old PC to play it since at least I don't want to waste my subscription.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Enoah35

Yes I already done my feedback a while back. Will probably do again. Would like to ask people what cards are stable since it seems both Geforce and ATI cards are experiencing issues, specially those cards that are newer than what Square Enix got on their compatibility list. I had to pull out my old PC to play it since at least I don't want to waste my subscription.

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The game runs perfectly on my AMD Radeon 7970, using driver 12.7 beta. A bit overkill for most, but it does show that modern cards and modern drivers aren't necessarily the issue in and of themselves.

I'm getting a similar problem. My game will randomly completely freeze my computer while playing. My game was working perfectly fine for about a month and I only started to get this problem today. Any ideas what could have caused this?

Same issue here. I've got a Gigabyte HD6950. Has a solution been found for this yet?

this isn't exclusive to Radeon cards, my nVidia 9400 GT has the same issue, I've done a few tweaks and the best I've been able to accomplish is to get my lock-out time pushed into the 60-90 minute range. This started with the roll-out of the Nvidia 3-series drivers, but I can't find an archive that has the last working driver in the 2s. Now that I know current ATI cards are not supporting FFXI I'm inclined to just buy another MMO. I know 14 runs on both but why would I put $ into it when the host company has made clear that they aren't going to keep products up to date with existing Tech? It's not even like this card is new, it's a 4 year old computer on the original card.

I've heard some rumors that it is related to the current version of Direct X. That makes sense; leave your game incompatible with one of the 10 most widely distributed programs on earth, and required for almost every other multimedia application so there really ISN'T and option to NOT install the current direct X.

The truly maddening issue is that since 14 runs without issue on both company's cards current drivers and current direct X they clearly know how to make it run. The only conclusion I can draw is that they don't WANT 11 to remain viable, and that's just sad. I love this game, love the character I've put so much effort into, and the people I've chosen to associate with. I'd hate to have to quit, but when I'm not allowed to play is there really another choice? Seriously, I'd love an answer here...

Lol, it's funny, cause i've only been playing for a day or two after 2 years of being absent. Played all day yesterday without a single problem occurring, been playing all day today. Was moving through Windy walls half an hour ago when it happened, rebooted my PC and it happened pretty much straight away, knew that this was not a good sign.

Will be quite mad, if it happens again.

Running a 6970+6950 flashed CFX

Just started back on FFXI a few weeks ago after being gone for 2 years.
I have an ATI 6970 and experience regular freezing which requires a hard reboot. The longest FFXI has run without crashing was 8 hours and the shortest was 2 minutes(froze in my mog house). I have been looking for a solution for weeks and have tried dozens of fixes with no luck. Does anyone know if someone was able to make a 6970 run without freezing?

Also I must say I am really disappointed in SE for not updating the comparability list in OVER A YEAR!?!
You guys have a new expansion coming out soon and people don't even know what hardware this game will run on...
I love FFXI but it looks like hardware compatibility is what will kill this game in the future.

Has anyone been able to fix this? Came back to ffxi after a 1 year break and its still crashing randomly in the same way...
(hd6950 2gig)

Same here Ultrabored, came back to XI while I wait for the relaunch of XIV and am disappointed to see this has not been addressed yet. Alot of people updated to this series card when XIV was originally launched and can no longer play XI without random system lockups. Any DEV out there want to give a responce on this, too many people are dealing with this for it to be ignored. My PC only has two games on it, XI and XIV...

List of cards/OS/drivers tested and confirmed by S-E:

http://www.playonline.com/ff11us/env...tml?pageID=win

I have seen the list of supported cards but I have also seen the recomended specs for XIV. What I am wondering is if they plan to update the list and begin to support the new cards that are needed to play XIV:ARR. It will hurt the game if people playing XI have to choose between the two.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Neekzz

It will hurt the game if people playing XI have to choose between the two.

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PS3 players are already facing that choice.

We do apologize for continued problems you are having with the game. The startup issue you are experiencing could be caused by a video card or display related problem. When you encounter a video card or display related problem, please check to make sure of the following:

1. You have a compatible video card, check system requirements on the game packaging orwww.playonline.com
2. You have the latest video drivers in the correct language and for the correct operating system.
2a. nVidia - http://www.nvidia.com
2b. ATI - http://www.ati.com

Adjust the Resolution:
To change display resolutions, use "FINAL FANTASY XI Config" before running the PlayOnline Viewer. To access this program, access the Start menu from Windows, and go to "Programs," "PlayOnline," "FINAL FANTASY XI," then "FINAL FANTASY XI Config." By altering the background graphics and overlay resolutions, you can run FINAL FANTASY XI at higher resolutions. 64MB of texture memory is recommended for these settings.

Frame Rate Issues:
If you are having issues with the frame rate, try changing the following options in the FINAL FANTASY XI Configuration Tool.

"Screen Size" Tab
- Overlay Graphics Resolution (Default setting: 640 x 480)
- Background Resolution (Default setting: 512 x 512)
The frame rate will increase by decreasing the size of both resolutions.

"Textures" Tab
- Texture Compression (Default setting: Low)
- On-screen Maps (Default setting: Uncompressed)
The frame rate may increase by adjusting these settings.
(Results may vary by hardware.)

"Effects" Tab
- Enable bump mapping (Default setting: Unchecked)
- Environmental Animation (Default setting: Normal)
The frame rate may increase when you disable bump maps and environmental animations.

Turn off bump mapping in the FINAL FANTASY XI Config utility:
1. Click on Start, navigate the Start menu and go to Programs or All Programs, then PlayOnline, then FINAL FANTASY XI, and click on FINAL FANTASY XI Config.
2. Click on the Effects tab, and un-check Bump Mapping.

Turn on Fog Table Emulation in your video card software.

These steps vary, based on which card you have. The software provided by the video card manufacturer is used to make setting changes. You should be able to find something called Fog Emulation Table, and you want to make sure that is turned on.

If there are still players that continue to have issues after trying these fixes, please create a new thread with your exclusive issue and a full DirectX Diagnostic so that we can investigate this issue further. Thanks again.