I'm having a very common problem, but nothing is fixing it.

I've been having what I think are graphics issues for the last month or so. I will be in game, the game will flash black, I will see my desktop, then will flash black again, and I will be back in game. I can hear FFXIV audio the whole time. Sometimes it will continuously cycle like this, game to black to desktop to black to game, 8 or more times and will invariably end with a "FFXIV has stopped working" error message and a white screen, making the game unplayable. This type of issue will happen when I am doing different tasks, such as running around town, questing, crafting, flying, happens ALL the time in dungeons, and happens WITHOUT FAIL whenever I'm in Coerthas Western Highlands. I have done lots of research on this issue, scouring forums and Reddit and I haven't found a viable fix. I have a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560M, am running Windows 7 64-bit, and am running the game in DirectX 9 because DX11 crashes my game. Any help would be greatly appreciated. If necessary, I took a video of what it's doing and will upload it if that will help in the diagnosis.

How are you playing? Full screen or borderless windowed? Which ever one you are on, try switching to the other to see if it has the same effects.

Personally sounds more like a program in the background thats messing with FFXIV.
My screen does this if I try to start up a program while I run FFXIOV (not all programs, more so games, rather than something minor like ms word or something.)
But I also encountered something like this in FFXI when my PC had a ton of viruses/spyware, except u look for any running programs and see none.

I have noticed randomly quick fading out to black and fade in to the normal bright. But I don't see the desktop. Only a huge FPS drop during that time. Also not so often than the OP has it.

First of pls note these only apply if your on a PC.

If this problem started recently think back of how long ago. If it was after update could be that it may have something to do with the direct x. Make sure it's up to date, iof so install and reinstall it.

Is your graphics card / monitor up to date on it's drivers?


Try testing your monitor on something else example. Does this only happen with FF or does it happen with other programs? If it does it could be a monitor issue as well. Try using it on an external device like a gaming console. If it happens there it could be do to the monitors refresh rate may have changed, or it's getting old.

If non of the above apply or work you could try doing a system restoration to a point were it did work. See if that helps. If everything else fails you can try perhaps you may need to either upgrade your graphics card or try lowering the specs to a lower setting. Try running the bench mark for a recommend setting. Hope this helps.

What is your harddrive? SSD? Can you make sure your drive has no error / corruption data?