Random crashes and freezes

[unnecesaurus]

Hello, fellow adventurers!

First time playing retail. Loving the experience so far, but I am having issues running the game consistently.

Yesterday was the first time I actually played it and it would crash often. I fiddled with some things (pol.exe properties, NVIDIA control panel settings, etc.), which made the crashes happen once every two hours or so. That wasn't so bad, but now the game's *freezing* for several minutes before crashing. There's no specific situation or time in which this happens.

There seem to be a plethora of similar issues all over the internet and I'm not sure how mine might relate. Here are some pertinent details:

- Bought the game on Steam
- Playing on Win11 x64 bits
- 12th Gen Core i7-12700H 2.30 GHz
- 16 GB of RAM
- 1TB SSD
- RTX 3060
- Already running everything in compatibility mode (Win8, if that matters)

Thanks in advance!

[Pixela]

Best bet is to ask on reddit, you'll get more answers there.

If you're on a laptop that could be your problem, also make sure you're not using mods or addons to rule those out.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxi/

[Alhanelem]

If you are on a laptop as above, you should make sure the integrated graphics is disabled while playing, though I've never heard of that causing frequent crashes.

Other than that, I can't help you too much, as like you I far exceed the necessary requirements but I've honestly never had the game crash except as a reseult of running other games or system-intensive processes at the same time as the game.

[Catmato]

Doesn't exactly sound like this is your problem, but if you're playing in true fullscreen, the game will crash any time something else takes focus, like alt+tabbing, locking the PC, or pressing the Windows key. This can be avoided by using windowed mode or borderless window mode. The crashing can also be prevented if your PC has some way to run DirectX8 games using DirectX9 or later. Google can give you more answers. That could also solve the integrated graphics problem that the previous poster mentioned.

You could try NOT running it in compatibility mode because I've never heard of that solving any problems. Also, you could try running from POL.exe instead of through Steam.

If none of that works, try running a file check on the game from the PlayOnline login screen.

Otherwise, good luck!

[Alhanelem]

Compatibility mode definitely isn't necessary, but certain legacy components are. But if you're playing the game that should be settled already.

[unnecesaurus]

Thank you, everyone! I guess I'll have to make a Reddit account if I can solve this with the help here XD Something I was trying to avoid, but I can see why it might be a necessity with some games.

I'll try borderless window mode. Didn't even see that as an option. I did notice JUST NOW that the game crashed because some Alienware program opened itself, so hopefully, that'll do the trick. I also switched the graphics settings so that the game uses my integrated GPU instead of the RTX. idk, some modern NVIDIA settings might not play too well with such an old game and I don't think I know my way around some of the newer options I didn't have with my GTX 1050 Ti. So far, no problems playing with the integrated graphics card.

And I'll also disable compatibility mode, then. I saw in a bunch of places that it could help a ton with Win11.

Anyway, tysm!

[Alhanelem]

There are also... things... that people use that can solve the problem better than the FFXI config tool can. But yes, if you're running full screen, *anything* that makes the game lose focus will cause it to "crash." with an error saying full screen mode was lost. The only way to fix that is to use windowed mode. If you're that averse to Reddit, don't go there just because of this.

Setting borderless windowed or windowed will prevent the game crashing from losing due to losing focus.

[unnecesaurus]

OK, I tried everything suggested so far and still crashing. Just had one. Playing in borderless mode, launching the game through pol.exe directly instead of Steam, etc. I even switched back to the RTX as the integrated GPU was still causing hangs and crashes.

I also have another issue that I didn't mention as idk if it's related, but anything's good info at this point, right? Shadows and some light sources flicker uncontrollably, to the point where I turned off shadows altogether. As for the lights, two examples I can give are the sconces in the Bastok gates (from town to Gustaberg and back, but it's also a thing with all other town gates) and the transition point between open and closed areas (e.g. the entrance to the tunnels in Valkurm Dunes). None of this bothered me so much that I felt like I had to fix it, but I also don't know if it's related.

And for the record, the game doesn't crash around these lighting glitches.

There are also... things... that people use that can solve the problem better than the FFXI config tool can.

What things? I'm getting desperate here ;_;

[Catmato]

In the Other tab in the ffxi config program, try checking Legacy Settings and checking "Optimize for certain graphics cards".

[Alhanelem]

My understanding is that setting was/is for certain Nvidia cards, I have an AMD card (as was the previous one), so I'm not sure it will matter. But I guess it can't hurt.