Using emotes/actions causes hangs that freeze the game

Hey y'all, this is really a continuation of a previous thread that received no support and was closed without notifying me (http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...19#post5192619)

Basically, when I use an emote, a combat ability, or really when any process requires a model or animation to be loaded, I have a chance to hang for several seconds up to whole minutes while the game tries to figure out what's happening. Music will stop, though network connection is unchanged, and gameplay continues relatively normally behind the scenes (damage ticks, chat remains active etc). When my game 'catches up', every animation that would have played during the hang plays at once.

This has caused a lot of frustration and ruined many great moments of the Shadowbringers story especially, and several times in party play such as running maps, my team have been left fighting monsters which have not yet appeared on my screen and are thus untargetable. Which is awkward when I'm tanking.

I have attempted a clean install of the game onto my SSD instead of an HDD and while the intensity of the hangs has generally decreased, they still occur fairly frequently.

Defraggler and crystaldiskinfo show my drives in good health after defragging HDDs and optimising SSDs, and I have no problems actually running the game on my computer.

Issues started approximately around patch 4.4, when the lead-up to Shadowbringers began in earnest, though I wasn't playing particularly regularly at the time.

Any help or ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Good afternoon and thank you for posting on the Final Fantasy XIV Technical Support Forums.

There are a few things that I can suggest, I'll try to avoid what you've mentioned in this and the previous thread:

1) Try a clean reinstall of your graphics card drivers.

2) Try a clean boot. Simply open the task manager and select the 'Start up' tab. Disable everything here and restart the PC. This will make sure that no background processes are interfering with the game.

3) Since you've already reinstalled the game and even moved the install folder, try removing the locally saved data folder (located My Documents > My Games > Final Fantasy XIV). Be sure to make a backup of this just in case it doesn't resolve the issue.

4) Update Windows. Make sure to install any non-mandatory updates as these may not be installed automatically.

5) Make sure that your anti-virus has the proper exceptions for both the install folder and the locally-saved data folder.

We hope we can be of assistance in helping you enjoy the exciting world of Final Fantasy XIV!