Cannot load into The Fringes - Error Code 17 Crash

A friend of mine recently finished Heavensward and was all set for Stormblood when, unfortunately, he crashed immediately upon entering The Fringes for the first time. Every single time since, he crashes upon trying to access that character. Something in The Fringes is making him crash and he can't even load in to move his character somewhere else.

The error he's getting is
"An unexpected error has occurred. Exiting Final Fantasy XIV.(17)"
His error report file is filled with entries like this
"[1227/232126.101:ERROR:settings.cc(325)] Settings version is not 1"

What's going on? How do we fix this?

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

I apologize for the delay in our response to your concern. Were any updates or changes made recently to the PC? Additionally, what has he tried to alleviate the issue?

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