HELP! Cannot run game in windowed mode (Fullscreen mode is 100% fine)

So this has been an ENORMOUSLY frustrating issue I'm having and desperately need help on. I've been able to play the game in fullscreen mode fine for the longest time on my laptop, but the windowed mode has never worked.

My reasoning for needing windowed mode so bad is so I can alt + tab and look at recipes, info, etc while playing without having to log out so it is quite a big deal I get windowed mode working.

I've already done the following to attempt to remedy this issue:

1. "Whitelist" FFXIV under NVidia control panel to perform at high performance settings and power mode at high performance

2. Updated Intel Chipset drivers

3. Updated nVidia at http://www.geforce.com/#/Drivers/Results/29659

4. Obtained DirectX SDK Update

Here are my specs:

Operating System: Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
System Model: Dell System XPS L502X
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2720QM CPU @ 2.20GHz (8 CPUs), ~2.2GHz
Memory: 6144MB RAM
Available OS Memory: 6058MB RAM
Page File: 2522MB used, 9592MB available
DirectX Version: DirectX 11
Card name: Intel(R) HD Graphics Family
Display Memory: 1696 MB
Dedicated Memory: 64 MB
Shared Memory: 1632 MB
Current Mode: 1920 x 1080 (32 bit) (60Hz)

Wasn't exactly sure what was needed to help out so let me know if anyone needs more info about my laptop to help out, but essentially I put down (just to be safe) a lot of what I thought might help.

Thanks in advance guys and I appreciate all your help!

Is a laptop, no? Any time you see "Intel" for the graphics, FF14 is going to have issue. The fact that you can run it at all is more than most people ever get, full screen or windowed. As much as I hate to say it, if that's all you have in it, I would take what you have and roll with it, and hope that windowed mode doesn't break as they update the game.

IF you have the nVidia Optimus thingy in there as well (and you might, depending on the exact model of the laptop?) then there should be some settings that allow you to force it to use the nVidia chip over the Intel. There's a few posts in the forums about it you can search for, or alternately see if someone else pops up with details, as I don't personally have experience with them.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by origamikitsune

Is a laptop, no? Any time you see "Intel" for the graphics, FF14 is going to have issue. The fact that you can run it at all is more than most people ever get, full screen or windowed. As much as I hate to say it, if that's all you have in it, I would take what you have and roll with it, and hope that windowed mode doesn't break as they update the game.

IF you have the nVidia Optimus thingy in there as well (and you might, depending on the exact model of the laptop?) then there should be some settings that allow you to force it to use the nVidia chip over the Intel. There's a few posts in the forums about it you can search for, or alternately see if someone else pops up with details, as I don't personally have experience with them.

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hmmm ok I've spent nearly 5 hours total trying to fix this problem but havent heard bout forcing nVidia chip so I'll try to find out how to, but if you find out how or anyone can let me know =/.

I believe what you need to do is "whitelist" the the game in your nVidia control panel? If you just type "optimus" or "whitelist" in the search at the top of the forums, you should get a list of threads that can help you?

Problem is you can't completely disable the IGP as it forwards the nVidia GPUs output to the HDMI. Have no idea what nv thought when they decided to build this poop into laptops...

What exactly is the problem?

Saying "window mode doesn't work" doesn't really state what's happening. ex. Is there an error message of any sort or does the game launch then close or does it not launch at all and sit on the desktop?

Try disabling windows aero.

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Originally Posted by DAOWAce

What exactly is the problem?

Saying "window mode doesn't work" doesn't really state what's happening. ex. Is there an error message of any sort or does the game launch then close or does it not launch at all and sit on the desktop?

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Intermittently I will get the "unable to detect directx device" error while in windowed mode. I turned off windows aero and its usually fine but now randomly get it sometimes.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Ventus

Intermittently I will get the "unable to detect directx device" error while in windowed mode. I turned off windows aero and its usually fine but now randomly get it sometimes.

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Okay, so the same thing the other Optimus users are getting.

I was going to suggest to disable DWM, but someone already did.

Just in case, bring up task manager. If you see "dwm.exe" running then go to the services tab and find "Desktop Window Manager". Disable it.

Can also run services.msc and set it to manual in there to stop it from starting with windows, provided that solves the problem.

ok yeah I saw DWM on task manager and put it on manual. How does this usually interfere with the game? Either way I'll let you know if it helps. Hope it does =(

Mostly it only interferes with the game for people who have the Optimus technology. But, it uses Direct X, which can cause interference with FF cause its programed poorly.

I'm about ready to give up, tried everything that people have said in this thread and much more and it still has random times the "unable to detect directx device" error comes up. No game or laptop should ever put me through as much misery as this issue has.

Guess I'll just have to log out and look up everything instead of having the luxury of minimizing.

FML

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Originally Posted by Ventus

Guess I'll just have to log out and look up everything instead of having the luxury of minimizing.

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Use Steam or Xfire (or even Raptr if it fixed its ingame overlay) to access web browsers while playing fullscreen; it's what I do because windowed mode runs like trash, even on my system.

I am a PC store manager and Technician in Madison, WI, USA.

I have an Intel i3-530 based PC with an ATI 4560 with 1GB DDR3 by Sapphire, with 4GB of RAM, 32bit Windows 7 Pro, running on a Gigabyte uATX mother board, and an used Seagate 80GB 7200rpm SATA.

I have adjusted many settings trying to squeak more power out of this build without changing any parts and found that despite my GPU running at 100% out on an open map, but runs about 45% in the city, and lag is also worst in the City.

Resolution from all other players is that the lag is caused by HDD access as each Character is individually loaded as a they come into your area. An independent programmer tells me that this is to reduce the risk of ranged hacking. It helps prevent a player from locating you from par away and messing with you. Anyway, the way to compensate is to install your game custom on a Stripe RAID enabled D-drive rather than the usual C-Drive location.

Tip: Do not Stripe Raid your C-Drive for performance unless you like reloading everything every time there is an issue.
Tip: Simply Clone your C-Drive after complete setup for a quick restore if you get a virus or some other corruption.

Advantage of a Stripe RAID D-Drive is that games can read and write very fast using both drives simultaneously, thus much of the lag goes away. Of course this does not compensate for Network lag.

Disadvantage Striped RAID cannot be cloned. If your striped raid gets a corrupted in anyway. Only solution is to erase and start over. Make data backups often or maintain a RAID5.

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Topic Author:

Your Laptop is not well suited for FFXIV. I would recommend selling it or taking it back to the store.

1) FFXIV is a 32bit game. Though they recommend an i7 and more than 4 GB of RAM, the game must run on WoW32 in order to load, and thus a 32 bit environment is emulated, slowing things slightly.

2) FFXIV has, to my the best of my experience, no APIs that take advantage of any kind of Multi processor technology. Thus it doesn't mater if you have a Core Duo or an i7 the bulk of your power comes from the first core. The rest is Windows trying to break up the work in the back ground. Don't get me wrong, having a multi core is far better than not, but its not the huge advantage that you might think, at least, not yet.

3) Intel Chipset not supporting of FFXIV. Just run the Demo program. It should reveal the issues.

4) Never mind the issues with your PC, even after replacing the computer you may still notice issues in certain modes. Thanks the archaic Direct X9 running under the hood. It has issues with many newer drivers designed for DX10 and DX11.

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My recommended minimum build.
-This recommendation Stands, both Laptop and PC. You want to game, don't fall below this line.

A) any Core2series, i3, i5, or i7 running no less than 2.6Ghz
B) 4GB DDR type memory, -should NOT perform any less than 800Mhz per chip
C) Memory MUST be configured in Matched pairs, or Triple if on i7. -Non matched will reduce performance too much.
D) Video card can be any PCI-E type with 1GB of RAM or better, but cannot score less than 500 on the PassMark Highend Video card results. http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/vi...Radeon+HD+4650

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Originally Posted by Chumeia

An independent programmer tells me that this is to reduce the risk of ranged hacking. It helps prevent a player from locating you from par away and messing with you.

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I think the reason is just that the game is optimized for PS3 which doesn't have enough memory to preload character models. The client doesn't need to know the exact location of a character to preload. A "in range" message from the server would suffice for that. Another problem is the lack of async HDD access. Means the game basically stops if it has to load a character.

And about the slowdown of 32bit on 64bit is just not true. Because it's no emulation but a compatibility mode on the cpu and windows on windows 64 handles the system calls like a normal win32.

Edit:
And sadly since Intel's IGP causes so much problems I would recommend to either get a PC or a laptop with AMD CPU(or old generation Intel without IGP) for this game.