Blank Launcher Window

[TheInnkeeper]

I've been trying to get a friend of mine back into FFXIV ARR, but her launcher is always blank whenever she opens it. She used to play on the same PC but never experienced this before she quit. We're both searching Google for solutions, but none are working, except for one that worked for a little bit, running FFXIV in compatibility mode for Windows 98 let her get around 400 minutes of updating done before it froze and the next time she opened the launcher it went back to being blank. I wish there was an error code for this but she's never gotten one, it just sits there and does nothing.

So far I know she's tried: (Not all are still in effect, these are just things she has tried due to suggestions)
- turning off virus protection
- running as admin
- both of those last two at the same time
- updating Internet Explorer
- setting the settings in Internet Explorer to default
- uninstalling IE11 and installing IE9 (It is back to IE11 fully updated)
- making FFXIV an exception in her firewall and virus protection
- adding the FFXIV sites to the IE "safe site" list
- running FFXIV in compatibility mode for Windows 98 (after it stopped working she took this off)

So now we're back to it being blank and we're out of possible solutions, or at least Google ones, so I've come here asking for assistance.

[TheInnkeeper]

If we don't find a solution soon I fear she'll just give up, so please, if anyone has anything that might work, please post it.

[TheInnkeeper]

...and she has quit trying to fix the problem now. So much for a help forum. :/

[Raist]

...and she has quit trying to fix the problem now. So much for a help forum. :/

Holiday weekend... most of the Community team won't return until Monday. It hasn't even been one full day since you posted (this morning). Most of that day was the bulk of the Friday work day, which means it may have only been up for review in this user-to-user forum for a handful of hours.

Just saying, may want to give things a little more time on the forums before abandoning hope of getting assistance.

One popular thing that has resolved this for many is to flush the MSIE internet cache, as well as your DNS cache. To flush the DNS cache, you open a command prompt and run ipconfig /flushdns. May also want to reboot the network devices as well to try flushing out their caches just to be thorough.

Otherwise, load these URL's to see what gets displayed:

http://frontier.ffxiv.com/worldStatus/gate_status.json

This should give a status report on the server itself, hopefully this:

{"status":1}

http://frontier.ffxiv.com/arr_win/eula.html

This should display the End User License Agreement, with a check box for agreeing to the license agreement, and a grayed out "Next" button. When the box is checked, that button should "light up". The launcher gets some data from the frontier server, so depending on what does/doesn't happen with those links, it may give an indication of where the issues lie (connectivity to the site, scripting support failing, etc.). Just to rule them out, may want to run through and make sure the browser technologies (.NET, Flash, Java, etc.) are up to date if it doesn't behave properly.

[Yukiko]

(..) may want to run through and make sure the browser technologies (.NET, Flash, Java, etc.) are up to date if it doesn't behave properly.

Many problems are because the launcher forces you to use OS microsoft IE, so if you normally use other browsers and have them up to date, it does not mean you also have IE up to date!

[TheInnkeeper]

Sorry, just dealing with a lot of stuff on top of all this, so I'm feeling a little rushed. She tried the ipconfig/flushdns and she turned off her router for 10 seconds and it still didn't work.

As for those links, she got {"status":1} from the first site, and a blank page after pressing the Next button on the second site.

[VoltaAsura]

"running FFXIV in compatibility mode for Windows 98."

Why?

Try removing this, as it could cause you compatibility issues.

The issue you are describing sounds exactly like what I encountered earlier this week....it was my firewall blocking an internet connection to the launcher. I suggest to see if she can disable it altogether and try to login.

[TheInnkeeper]

She doesn't have it on compatibility mode anymore, it quit working. And she already has the firewall no longer blocking the launcher, so unless I can get some ports or something she needs to have open, don't think there's anything left to do with the firewall. She also used to play before she quit, so unless ports have changed I don't think it would be that either.

[VoltaAsura]

But what I am suggesting is to disable the firewall altogether and see if that helps. This was my exact issue.

I had set it to unblock ffxiv, but it still wouldn't connect. I tinkered around a bit, and eventually got it to work, but then i kept getting 2002 error....until I disabled the firewall altogether - that worked for me.

[Raist]

As for those links, she got {"status":1} from the first site, and a blank page after pressing the Next button on the second site.

It shouldn't go anywhere if you actually click the Next button since you weren't doing it from the start of the process, so it doesn't have the strings populated for your account and character data and such. The important thing was if you were able to read the EULA in the frame, whether the checkbox was present and functioning, and whether the button changed it's shading when you checked the box. If all that is good, then most of the underlying technology the launcher uses is basically functioning properly.

It sounds like either your launcher or it's support files have gotten knackered up, or something indeed is blocking some of the additional connections. Did she flush the Internet Explorer cache? You mentioned flushing DNS, but not the browser. If so, then we may need to investigate connectivity. Let's start by pinging some of the addresses to make sure they are accessible. Not sure which lobby server you are using, but since you are on Midgardsormr we can test against the same one I use.

From a command prompt, run this command:

ping -n 25 neolobby02.ffxiv.com

It should resolve to 199.91.189.74, and then ping it 25 times. Watch the times from ping to ping. If there are large variances from ping to ping (more than about 10% of previous ping), there may be something going on en-route we need to look at further. If there are any * results (took too long so it stopped waiting), then you may be running into packet losses that definitely need to be investigated. Let's also try a trace as well, with this command:

tracert neolobby02.ffxiv.com

This will ping each hop along your route 3 times. Again, if there are any large variances or *'s amongst the three pings to each hop, there may be something that needs to be investigated further. Note that if a hop in the trace shows 3 *'s, it may mean that there is a network rule set at that hop to not respond to the ICMP echo request used by the ping command. For those hops, a triple star is not cause for concern--unless you trace it again and it responds at that hop. An intermittent * event at the same hop is indication of an high utilization/congestion that needs attention--it can be a source for all manner of stability problems like lag spike and loss of session (connection lost error).

Now, we need to do the same tests against some servers in Japan as well. Ping and trace again to these three servers. They can come into play at different times during authorization, version check, and such:

124.150.158.117
124.150.158.110
124.150.157.126

If for any reason, any of these IP's is flat out blocked completely with no responses returned, then something is indeed blocking the connection--most likely a firewall. If it happens from a ping or tracert, then it is highly likely the firewall is in play, or maybe something is off in the protocol stack. But let's look at the firewall first, as it is the more common culprit. This can sometimes be triggered also after an update is done, because the firewall is detected a newer version of the game's executable file(s)--so pings/traces may work, but the game still can't connect. To correct this you need to update the firewall rule so it recognizes the new version of the file. How you do this can vary by product, so you may not be able to simply update it--you may need to remove the rule and then add it back. Disabling the firewall completely is usually a solid test for such issues (though, AVG's firewall has proven to still cause issues when disabled--it only clears once it is uninstalled).

If disabling the firewall clears everything up, then you definitely want to revisit the rules. You may also want to go ahead and white-list some server addresses as well. The world servers are all hosted within single subnets, all leased by SE. Some other servers are also within those subnets (like the frontier, patch-ver, etc.) so, you can safely whitelist the entire banks from 199.91.189.1 - 199.91.189.255 and 124.150.157.1 - 124.150.157.255. Even if you play on servers in Canada (or in the future, the new EU servers overseas), you still want to add a rule for the JP servers that start with 124--the launcher and patching routine uses IP's in that same subnet. There are additional servers in other subnets as well that you may want to unblock, just to cover more bases. These are used in part for authentication, but also may come in to play also for some oddball things like DNS and UDP traffic as well:

124.150.158.117
124.150.158.110
(secure servers for sign-on and such)

202.67.53.31
202.67.53.95
202.67.53.32
202.67.53.96
(SE servers used for DNS and such)