Persistent black screen when launching - spent over 2 days trying to get it to work

So, I've been playing FFXIV on my own computer for many months without problem. I just got the game for my GF and have been trying - for over two days without success - as I have been perpetually frustrated trying to get past the permanent black screen on startup. Interestingly, during one of my MANY attempts to tweak some variable in the below list of things I have attempted to do, I was able to actually get into the game one time - but that was the only time I got past the black screen, and as soon as I quit the game and tried to re-enter, I immediately met the black screen again - all without actually changing any settings in between.

I have researched online and tried everything that is within my power without success. Granted, I'm not highly PC savvy, but I've tried:
Resetting IE. Set frontier.ffxiv.com and ffxiv.com as trusted sites within IE.
Running the launcher as administrator.
Adjusting the settings within the FFXIV_BOOT file various different ways.
Turning off Windows Defender and Windows Firewall.
Uninstalled and reinstalled the entire game several times - including trying to download it from Square-Enix directly, from Steam, and from Amazon.
Updated DirectX files.
Flushed DNS cache.
Tried setting Chrome as default browser, and then back to Internet Explorer (v11).

She has a brand new Alienware laptop that is running Windows 10. Anyone that can help me get this figured out would have my sincere appreciation!

I and several other people who are on RCN are experiencing the same issue. Black launcher, login credentials field not showing up, forums not loading properly, account services timing out.

There's nothing you can physically do, it's a routing/packet loss issue that's unfortunately not getting any attention seeing as its been occurring for 2+ days now. I had to write this up on my smartphones mobile network, as it loads everything fine due to bypassing my ISP.

If it's any consolation, you can get lucky with a few relaunches and have the gui appear, login, and shouldnt have any connectivity issues when playing. Can just keep the game open indefinitely depending on your setup.

I literally have tried to launch the game over a 100 times the past 3 days - and only once did it actually get past the initial black screen and into the game. But when I logged out (without changing *anything*), and tried to re-launch the game, it brought me to the black screen again. I had problems with my original setup last year on my own computer, but nothing like this - it is extremely frustrating to be trying everything I can and not be able to install/play the game I purchased for my GF.

I'm having this same issue with patcher and forums. I had to have an FC mate open this post and tell me what it says >.> (263784673589 reloads later, I can finally reply to raise my hand and say "me too").
I'm also on RCN. Only started happening to me today, though - though I'd noticed the forums slow to load a few days prior (but no patcher issues, till today).
Took me about 6 or 7 restarts of the game for the patcher to either not be a black screen or to finally show at least the login portion of the patcher >_> But if it's going to be as bad as it was for you.... urgh...
I'd be surprised if I can even post this reply...

I'm running into the same issue, also on RCN, and it also started a day or two ago. Here are the results from running a tracert on frontier.ffxiv.com:

Tracing route to frontier.ffxiv.com [124.150.157.190]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

...
2 9 ms 8 ms 8 ms bdl1.wth-ubr1.sbo-wth.ma.cable.rcn.net [10.16.200.1]
3 13 ms 10 ms 12 ms bvi200.aggr2.sbo.ma.rcn.net [10.65.92.101]
4 19 ms 18 ms 18 ms tge0-1-0-0.core2.sbo.ma.rcn.net [207.172.15.147]

5 16 ms 15 ms 15 ms tge0-0-0-1.core2.nyw.ny.rcn.net [207.172.19.221]

6 18 ms 17 ms 16 ms bdle3.border2.nyw.ny.rcn.net [207.172.15.85]
7 16 ms 19 ms 19 ms peering.kddi.com [198.32.160.25]
8 17 ms 16 ms 16 ms nytjbb001.int-gw.kddi.ne.jp [59.128.3.69]
9 76 ms 79 ms 86 ms lajbb001.int-gw.kddi.ne.jp [59.128.3.1]
10 177 ms 176 ms 181 ms otejbb205.int-gw.kddi.ne.jp [203.181.100.57]
11 178 ms 177 ms 175 ms jc-ote301.int-gw.kddi.ne.jp [118.155.197.178]
12 176 ms 177 ms 178 ms 106.187.28.198
13 177 ms 175 ms 188 ms 61.195.56.133
14 177 ms 171 ms 171 ms 219.117.144.78
15 * 195 ms * 219.117.144.49
16 175 ms 175 ms 177 ms 219.117.144.29
17 * 171 ms 173 ms 219.117.147.186
18 184 ms 197 ms 200 ms 124.150.157.190

There is something weird going on once things get into KDDI's network.

[Edit] After a few more tracert runs, the packet drop consistently happens once things hit or go past the IP address 219.117.144.49, which is an IP owned by Square Enix according to a WHOIS lookup?

Try opening up Internet Explorer and then going into the options and deleting the Internet cache (Temporary Internet Files) and the browser cookies. Make sure when you clear the Temporary Internet files, you should uncheck the top option for "Preserve Favourites Website Data" because if you have any book marks for the FFXIV site then it might not clear the cache for it. Please be aware that clearing the cookies will wipe any saved logins, if this is a problem try just clearing the cache first

Apologies if you already did this, but your post only said about having cleared DNS cache and from my experience the few times I've had a black screen on that page, this fixes it every time as it's just corrupted browser cache.

The main login screen is actually an Internet Explorer webpage (even if you have another web browser set as your default), it's also the username that's stored as a cookie in IE so wiping the cookies wipes the saved username.

Hope this helps!

Still no luck. I deleted the Internet cache, and still no luck. Anyone else have anything else I can try?

Try launching another D3D game, and with it running, then launch FFXIV from the launcher. If it runs, you can close the other game and continue playing FFXIV.

Yeah... I know what your thinking. Why would this fix it? Don't ask me. But since the 2.3 patch, I've had do to something like this to get the game working. Otherwise, I get a black screen, or the game crashes when attempting to launch.

If it is the launcher coming up blank and not the actual game itself, this is often triggered by security or script parsing errors. There was a notice in lodestone a while back about he change to SSL3...may need to verify support is enabled within the Windows IE components:

Open the search/run box and run inetcpl.cpl. This is the core Internet Properties page for Windows and IE. Go to the advanced tab and scroll towards the bottom. You should see a section there for encryption standards. Make sure the TLS options are enabled.

Otherwise, make sure you have both .Net 3.5 and 4.x enabled. They started disabling 3.5 by default a while back, but some applications may still use elements that were deprecated in 4.x. You can check it through Control Panel in the add/remove programs module. There will be a link for turning windows features on/off. If the 3.5 option isn't listed with 4.x, it may be under a legacy heading.

As always, run updates and such to make sure your browser tech is current: .Net (windows updates), java, and flash

Hello. I tried what Raist suggested and none of that worked (Java, Flash and .Net were all updated). TLS options were unchecked, but checking them didn't help. I've left them checked. I went into the Control Panel and fully enabled 3.5 (which was only partially enabled) and 4.x, without success. Lauraul, I'm not 100% sure what you mean by another D3D game - can you recommend one or two that I can try? Thank you for both of your responses - especially yours Raist, as it made it clear where I needed to go to verify/update my settings.