Crash to desktop at startup/"has stopped responding"

I've started playing FF14 again, but I'm having a lot of trouble getting the game to even launch. I played the game during beta and at launch, but this is the first time I've encountered this issue.

After I login and click "play" the game crashes. I've had two variations of the problem, one is where the game window turns grey and Windows say it's stopped responding. The other is where the game appears to launch (I get a black screen and I see the game's cursor) but it immediately crashes to the desktop with no dialogue box.

I'm using new hardware and I'm on a new Windows install since I last played the game, but I don't think this is the cause of the issue since I was able to play it last night. After having the crashing issue, the game just started launching no problem. Now it's back to crashing at startup again.

Any clues guys? This is really annoying!

I had a similar issue and fixed it with a directx 9.0c install:

This is what I did:

1. Downloaded directx 9.0c package (http://www.filehippo.com/download_di...c66a550abc588/)
2. Double clicked file. It asks where you want to extract the files, extract anywhere you want.
3. find the folder you extracted the files to from the previous step
4. find DXSetup.exe among the other files and run it
5. follow the prompts to install
6. after it's finished installing, try running the game