Please don't misconstrue this, I mean no personal attack, but this is frustrating Why do people not READ?

The GFX drivers were updated, and are the most current. THe old drivers were removed from add/remove, then DDU'ed, then a full restart, then a reinstall with a fresh download using the clean install just to be safe. No changes were observed in behavior.

MAKE A DECISION. The install instructions with the installer DO NOT state you must install the game on C, yet you are saying you need to. Make up your minds. We are no longer in the 1980s', where TSRs and all that **ap were an Issue. This setup of the game on a drive other than C has worked since I installed the game over 10 YEARS ago. Every PC I have built, every PC I have run this on this has not been an issue. I also cannot install the game on C, as it requires more space than my C drive has free. I would have to completely rebuild the entire machine (to restructure the drives, and thus have to reload everything to do this, and that I believe is a bit of an ask to make.

- I have as mentioned in a previous post, ensured no overlays are running. I have gone so far as to not even load up Discord at boot. It never did anyways, but used to talk to my friends while playing (Discords interface was on my 2nd monitor). But since starting this whole process I have not even loaded it up (resulting in more than 1 actual phone call from my friends to check on my mental health since I wasn't online). I do not load Steam unless running a steam game, and FF14 was loaded as a pure PC game, not a steam version. Th NVidia control panel is running in the background, but all overlays are disabled.

- Windows was updated, with optional downloads, as the 2nd item I tried back in Feb. I declined the preview updates. In going through the list of update history, The only thing installed around the time of the issue was KB5051987 from 2/11/2025 However the only released information about it was updates to Roblox (on ARM systems), Open Secure Shell issues, and Citrix issues. Since that manual check the system continues to get it's daily Defender update without issue.

I have never had an issue with the onboard graphics, it has nothing plugged into it, and never has. While I seriously doubt this is the issue I will BIOS disable it and see if there are any changes.

In my continued attempts to narrow this down I am essentially out of things to do. I am now running this thing like it's on a potato, little more better than old 16 bit graphics if you ask me. I keep getting asked to do things I cannot (move the game to C, revert to DX9) and suggestions that well meant, but show little use of critical thinking. When a game has run fine for 10 years, and has been running fine on a new machine purpose built for it for 8, then suddenly develops an issue, everyone says it's the PC's fault, oh it can't be the game.....

Nothing else is having issues, no other game is crashing, and I have several that just as, if not more, power and resource hungry and they run flawlessly. I have provided logs, detailed descriptions of steps taken, even provided the frackin byte offsets of the failing files, and till everyone keeps saying the game doesn't have issues.

I just want to be able to play again without worrying about crashing out in the middle of a dungeon, or raid, or Trial. I want to be able to play the game and be able to talk to my friends and FC members again. I want to know that spending close to 3 grand on a machine wasn't a total waste of money. I may not be a top tier raider, I may not make server/center/world firsts, I may not be BIS on all my toons and classes (yet) but none of that matters if I can't even play the game.

I will go and make change in my BIOS to ensure the onboard GFX is not being used (even though that is it default behavior) I have little hope that this will work, but I will try it.