
Originally Posted by
TheInnkeeper
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:
Code:
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:
Code:
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)