Playonline Viewer Slow/Unresponsive

[Discordia]

Details

I recently reactivated my FFXI account and installed PlayOnline Viewer and Final Fantasy XI. I had downloaded the Vista/Win7 compatible PlayOnline (POL) Viewer from Square-Enix website before installing the game off the Final Fantasy XI Ultimate Collection DVD. When I started POL Viewer for the first time, there was no issues that I noticed. Then it began the update and that's when I noticed that it was very, very slow. It took over 10 hours for the POL Viwer to update roughly 500 files. Now that the update is completed, I tried logging in for my very first time.

I entered my information and noticed no problems with the POL Viewer and then proceeded to log-in. Immediately I noticed that the POL Viewer seems to have stalled and then a few seconds later it would resume connecting online but it was very, very slow. The process took roughly 5 minutes to just complete the connection process. I was then presented with a TOS Agreement notice in which I had to read through the agreement before clicking on "Accept". This page is unresponsive or very slow in reading any response. POL Viewer also slows down Windows as well.

Steps

1. Installed Vista/Win7 Compatible POL Viewer
2. Installed FFXI, Rise of the Zilart, Chains of Promathia, Treasures of Aht Urghan, Wings of the Goddess and add-on scenarios off of the Final Fantasy XI Ultimate Collection DVD.
3. Start POL Viewer
4. POL Viewer updates itself (slow)
5. Restart POL Viewer
6. Start POL Viewer
7. Log-in/Connection
8. POL Viewer connects (slow), Terms of Service is presented (Slow/Unresponsive)

Date & Time

Hawaii (8/29/11 11AM - 8/30/11 11AM)/PDT (8/29/11 2PM - 8/30/11 2PM)

Frequency

Always - No matter how often I would kill POL Viewer through Task Management and restart it, the same results.

Platform

PC

PC Manufacturer & Model Number

Hybrid Built (DELL Studio 540 + upgraded hardware)

Operating System

Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit Service Pack 2

Graphics Card

Gigabyte GeForce GTX460-1 GB GDDR5 PCIE2 256B 2DVI-I/HDMI/FAN RTL Video Card GV-N460OC-1GI

Nvidia Drivers 280.26

ISP

Hawaiian Telcom

Type of Internet Connection

Residential DSL (3Mbps)

[matic]

i'm having a similar problem. I logged on for the first time since the POL update (8/29) and now POL takes a good 5 min to connect, and then disconnects me with a 0260 error soon after.

i can only assume that this is the culprit:

After the update is complete, the PlayOnline Viewer’s executable file will have been changed to “pol.exe.” Accordingly, you may be required to update the settings of any security software running on your PC that restricts network access by executable files. If, after updating, you encounter errors such as “POL-0019” or “POL-1160,” or have difficulty connecting to PlayOnline, please review your security software documentation and change its settings if needed.

but aside from making sure pol.exe is set to "allow" on norton antivirus, i have no idea what to do to fix this.

[Discordia]

I'm not sure what they mean by "security software" so I'm assuming they mean both 3rd parties and Windows-core applications. I checked Windows Firewall and allowed Playonline under "Exceptions" and enabled "All Networks" for it (including internet) I was not aware of any need to add ports.

http://www.playonline.com/ff11us/polnews/news2423.shtml

Other than that, I do not own or run a security suite, so I have no idea what else could be a problem.

[RAIST]

only time I've noticed POL slow down is when it looses focus for some reason (like after a new version installs and security pop-ups and such happen, all animations come to a near stop in POL). Put the focus back on POL and all is good again. Just one thing to check for I guess--to see if the focus is lost on POL.

Otherwise, there may be some issues with IP traffic stalling or something. If your security software or router is logging connections, I'd check to see if something is getting blocked when you try to log on. SE uses a TON of IP's, something may be blocking some traffic from them for some reason--some block specific things like ping and DNS traffic by default. If you find some SE IP's getting blocked, try white listing them. Or if it's a port traffic routing issue, might need to setup port forwarding properly with your router.

I've found many IP's logged over the years, sometimes I had to whitelist a specific IP to fix things, but I've found one big block leased to SE, so if you see activity in theses ranges it should be safe to allow them:

124.150.152.0 - 124.150.159.255
(found after researching a few IP's getting blocked on my system, ARIN reported this whole block for SE)

If you find IP's outside these ranges, you can get info on the IP at somewhere like www.dnsstuff.com. It will give a small report, and there will be a hyperlink of the IP address for WHOIS info that will give you a full ARIN report for the entire subnet block containing that IP address and who it is leased to.

Ultimately, I added rules to allow these IP's in my local firewall:

124.150.152.0-124.150.152.255
(IP block around quite a few IP's that were getting blocked at different times when zoning)

124.150.154.0-124.150.154.255
(IP block around blocked IP's that resolved names in the pol.com domain (like ffxi00.pol.com), some names are listed within the POL files)

202.67.53.31 dns1.square-enix.net
202.67.53.95 dns2.square-enix.net
202.67.53.32 dns3.square-enix.net
202.67.53.96 dns4.square-enix.net

[Fedora]

Salam ^^

I had POL-1160 error, my internet was working fine except I couldn't log to FF so I restarted all devices (switch..PC.. ..etc) everything, and it actually worked for me hope it works for you too

[Discordia]

I haven't done anything else to amend my issue but the problem just went away on its own. I'm not sure if it's because I just recently reactivated my account and that the servers needed some time to refresh? But it seems to be fine today.

[Neresh]

Sorry to dredge up an old thread, but I'm having this issue as well, even after completely removing and reinstalling the entire game. Right now, it's very difficult to use POL with it being mostly unresponsive. I'm not certain what has changed on my PC lately, other than the standard-issue windows updates.