Load Screen Hangs

Very often my game hangs on load screens, mostly happens when loading areas that have either large numbers of players, or large numbers of NPCs, but is not exclusive to any specific zones. For the record, the game does not crash, it simply locks up. The computer keeps working fine, it is just the game ( it is worth noting that when bringing up task manager during a freeze, FFXIV's process always shows exactly 13% CPU usage). All drivers are up to date, FFXIV has been reinstalled, nothing seems to be fixing it, or even make it happen less. Any ideas?

Has this been occurring just today or is it something you've been dealing with for some time now? If it is today only, it could be the servers about to undergo maintenance in time for the new patch tonight.

Do you mind posting your PC specs too including storage?

This has been happening for I think about two months now.

CPU: AMD FX-8350
Motherboard: Asus Crosshair V Formula-Z
Memory: Patriot Memory, 2x4 (8 total)
Graphics: XFX R9 290
Hard Drive: Old Hitachi 1TB (No clue on the actual model, it is fairly old now)
Then another Western Digital Velociraptor 500GB 10,000 RPM which has FFXIV on it by itself.

Worth noting all drives are very regularly defragmented.

Hmm, since it's loading problems, it sounds like your HDD is about to go then as the rest of your specs are fine for the game. Have you considered opting for a SSD (Solid State Drive)? A SSD will be FAR faster and more energy efficient than your old HDD's you have. I would suggest a small 120GB for Windows only and the other (a 240GB+) for your games. It could be a combination of both your HDD's that are beginning to show their age. Have you tried installing FFXIV on another drive to see if that was the issue? Does this loading issue affect FFXIV only or does it affect any other games you have? It could be Windows that's also causing this, when was the last time your installed/re-installed Windows?

If you do buy a SSD, you can use a cloning program if you want o preserve everything you currently have without needing to reinstall Windows.

It is possible the HDD's are about to go. I've tried putting FFXIV on both drives, same issue on both. The one FFXIV is on now (the Velociraptor) should only be maybe 2 years old if that, so it's life should be fine. Reinstalling Windows is also a possibility, I did that around 1-2 years ago, so it should in theory be fine still too, but it might be something to try (only avoiding doing so due to nasty data caps my ISP has).

You should download and install the Windows ISO on a USB Flash drive to avoid that issue and you can also apply the latest updates to that ISO as well so you don't have to install millions of Windows updates, lol. But if you have a spare drive, try that first and if you can, try installing the game on another computer, just swap the PSU and GPU and you should be able to test it. You can also try copying the game files to the other PC and it should work by just downloading the client only too.

I would honestly install Windows 10, it works great and my FFXIV game never crashes too, I can Alt/tab better than in WIndows 7 too.

Aasta, you mentioned the Final Fantasy process shows 13% usage. Is that the DX9 or the DX11 one? I have the same issues with the game hanging during the load screen, but only with the DX11 process (which is 64-bit). I checked the thread/address that hangs with Sysinternals Process Explorer, and it hangs at DllUnregisterServer in the XAudio2_7.dll file; in simpler terms, it hangs when it starts playing an area or instance sound effects. If I turn off the audiosrv service, the game plays fine (without sound). It doesn't happen at all in DirectX9 mode, but it annoys me because DX9 is very slow in crowded areas.

I use DX11. What you are mentioning sounds about right though... I never put the two together but now that I think about it the lockups do seem to be around the time the game would normally start playing the new zone's audio.

It would seem I have found the issue, sound quality. Under Sound, select your speaker device, go to properties, then Advanced tab, and make sure the Default Format is, for example, 48000 Hz. As I do music work on my machine a fair amount and my hardware supported it... I use 192,000 Hz...which FFXIV seems to have an issue with. Not an ideal fix, but it, after a day of testing seems resolved. The issue comes back instantly if I put the audio back at 190000Hz, so it is reasonable to say that is the issue at this point.