Losing macro pages

[Cyrille]

It seems my macro books aren't as strong as they used to be. I am, during play, losing complete pages. It seems to happen randomly (not able to reproduce consistently). Only complete pages are lost (Specific example: macros on #1 of book 8, both ALT and CTRL). Only 1 page at a time (I had lost #1 and a short while after, I had lost #10).



Platform:
Windows XP (including most recent updates)

Internet Connection Speed:
8Mbit/s

Date & Time:
2011/06/29 - Between 11:00 and 13:00 CET (GMT+2)

Frequency:
Sometimes

Character Name:
Cyrille

Race:
Hume M

World:
Valefor

Main Job:
Warrior

Support Job:
Dancer

Area and Coordinates:
Cape Terrigan, near southern entrance to Valley of Sorrows

Party or Solo:
Solo

Monster Name:
Robber Crab / Terror Pugil

Steps:
I access my macros/menus using a controller (PS3 controller) on my PC.

During battle I'm just using my macros, switching back and forth to browser and IM (windowed mode). Then suddenly when trying to use macros, a complete page is missing. I am not aware of any pattern in my actions that leads to this issue. Restoring my macros from the server works just fine. The issue appeared a few times in a row (even after making some macros, the new macros disappeared). I also had some amount of time when the issue did not appear.

Just now, all I did was selecting macro page (not during battle), canceled selection, opened main menu, closed main menu (didn't do a thing), selected macro page, macros gone.

I've talked to a GM already. He suggested me to do a file check for PlayOnline and FF. PlayOnline was fine. For FF it found about 600 errors. These were fixed and I did another check to make sure. No errors were reported. Issues I had with some furniture not being visible were resolved (yay). However, I still experienced the macro issue.

I did not experience this issue before yesterday's emergency maintenance.

You can imagine that this issue might involve the deaths of friends when I would experience it when playing White Mage.



I am sorry I can not provide more information in order to consistenly reproduce the issue. Maybe other players have experienced the same. I hope that this can be resolved.

[Cyrille]

I think I found a way of reproducing the issue. It is not consistent, but it did cause the issue for me a few times.

I selected a macro set via the main menu, and just pressed up and held it (pressing down works as well). At some point, pages started to be blank. Not all, but a few.

I hope this helps in identifying the issue and fixing it.

[Cyrille]

Either my installation is somehow broken, or there's more (since I have the other issue I'm not sure whether it's worth to create a new bug report):

When maximizing chat log, I can no longer scroll to the top and I can only scroll through a part of the history.

[Ironside]

This is going to sound like a completely moronic reply if I've misread your post, but... pressing up or down while you have macro bars open will scroll through your macro sets. If you aren't using all of the sets in that book, they could appear to be blank.

And yeah, odds are I've misread. Sorry if I have.

[Cyrille]

It will indeed scroll through the macro sets (I referred to them as pages), and that's exactly when they start disappearing on me. I'm sure I'm looking at the right numbers. On WHM I have 5 sets filled, scrolling through them for a while makes me end up with less than 5 sets filled. The same happened when I first encountered it on WAR, sets 10, 1 and 2 have macros and I ended up with only set 2 having macros.

I can't explain it, but it happens.

[Kristal]

Since you are on Windows XP, how much HD space is left? Did you run ScanDisk yet? It sounds like your HD is the culprit.

[Cyrille]

I have over 300GB free on the drive I installed FFXI, on my OS drive I have more than 100GB free. I did a scandisk as described here, and no errors were reported.


Some more information on my chat log problem: if I switch to party/ls/tell log, those are empty.

[Cyrille]

Now I lost the names of my macro books and my sorted spells are back to their default order...

I think I'm going to try a reinstall.

[Laraul]

Either my installation is somehow broken, or there's more (since I have the other issue I'm not sure whether it's worth to create a new bug report):

When maximizing chat log, I can no longer scroll to the top and I can only scroll through a part of the history.

Yeah... you are running a parser or something that's opening the log and macro files while the game is running. What stuff are you running?

BTW... always a good idea to switch to a different macro book after changing any macros so they are save to disk.

[Cyrille]

No parser or any third party tools whatsoever. My wife has the problem too now. I'm starting to believe that our anti virus software (Avira Antivir, licensed) is related. It had an update yesterday...

You may have point about accessing the files. I would sortof like to see someone from SE confirm this possibility as they know how it's implemented.