A System Error Has Occurred! A tale of woe about HTTP error -2146697208

[AKArachnae]

Hi there, I've tried many solutions to my problem, and am kind of at my wit's end trying to get back into the game, so I've finally decided to post here, after seeing nothing on the first three pages of any of the tech support forums that might be related.

Back in January, I think, after playing normally since August, my launcher (seemingly randomly) starting giving me an error. This error, in fact. That is, when it wasn't an all-black screen that sat there and never did anything, even after staying up all night to think about it. There have been two occasions in the past few months that I got a regular screen. Once to show me the EULA, but without a proper bottom to it, so I couldn't accept it, and once that I tried to log in, and forgot my account wasn't subbed anymore, so it kicked me right back out.

The error number it gives is an Internet Explorer error which indicates a failure to download the webpage, usually from an interrupted connection. But I can access other webpages just fine, and I can get a proper 403 code when I try to access frontier.ffxiv.com from a browser.

I've tried several solutions, like rebooting my computer, power-cycling my router and modem, factory-resetting my router and modem, deleting the game information under My Documents, reinstalling the game first back to my F-drive and now in the default directory on my C-drive. I've tried using Internet Explorers 8, 9, 10 and 11. I've made sure I'm not using a proxy or VPN, I've made sure my Internet Settings allow for invalid signatures.

I am truly unsure of what to try next. Every potential fix I look up on forums, or Reddit seems to yield no results. Thus I am here, asking in my own thread. Is there anyone else who's solved this issue through a method I've yet to try? Do any of the support staff for SquEnix have some gem of insight that might solve this issue?

Help me Technical Support, you're my only hope.

[Sei-Ryu]

I'm having the same issue as well. I'm about to contact tech support directly, but I can't play on my laptop. I've tried most of the solutions that you have and any fixes were purely temporary. I'm not really sure what to do at this point either.

[AKArachnae]

If you do contact support, do come back and tell us how you fixed it, or what they suggested. This issue is driving me crazy.

[Edit: Too many letters]

[Raist]

Just to be sure... have you made sure your browser and all it's supported technologies (.NET, Flash, Java, etc.) are up to date? You can test the plugins for Flash and Java at their respective websites as well, just to make sure something odd like a firewall isn't preventing the executables from running properly.

May need to update Windows Media Player as well, as it uses some of it's underlying support for media playback. Also, make sure that .NET 3.0 is enabled. It is not enabled by default in most stock installs of Windows 8 (not sure about Win7 now). It can be toggled by going into the Control Panel and looking under Programs and Features ->Turn Windows Features on/off. A lot of things were deprecated in the move to .NET 4, and it could be causing issues if you don't have .NET 3 activated. It has been known to even prevent some install programs from running properly.

[AKArachnae]

Thanks so much for the reply!

I just checked my Flash and Java, all up to date there. Does FFXIV use IE or my default browser? I was under the impression that it used IE, but I updated Opera just to be sure. Writing this post also gave me the idea that maybe Opera isn't supported, so I set the default browser to Chrome, but that didn't work either. I also checked my Windows Features as you suggested. Good call with that, it seems .NET 3 wasn't fully enabled. Unfortunately, enabling it brought no change, and the launcher client still gives me the same HTTP error.

[Raist]

Can you see the EULA from this link? And does it show the sort of aetherflow/starry background graphic and colored text? Those are basic HTML elements and should render just fine provided there isn't a security/connectivity issue blocking access to the flat files and such.

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

Also, if you hover over the next button does it change it's shade slightly and also "light up" if you click the box for accepting the agreement? If you actually click the "Next" button it will likely return strange errors because you don't have all the stored values for the scripts, but it should at least be able to run those mouse-over and on-click portions of the page's scripting. If not... there is something amiss in the browser--possibly the security settings need to be lowered or have the site added to the trusted sites list.

And yes, the launcher is based loosely on MSIE--it doesn't use your default browser, but it's own sort of custom version of MSIE, but it calls upon the supported files that would be installed/registered in the Windows System folders and such for MSIE and various browser technologies (like javascript or ASP and such). In essence, something being out of whack within MSIE's config/support could impact the launcher if it is something functionally bound at the system-wide level (like .NET and Java type stuff).

On that note... just something to try to see if it may have an impact. Go into your Java properties from Control Panel and go to the Advanced tab. A few categories down the list there should be an entry for which browsers that Java will run on. It should have Internet Explorer checked, possibly even grayed out as well. Make sure there is also a check in the box for Mozilla as well. MSIE was basically built around that initially (as well as a long list of other browsers like Firefox and such). Enabling it is a workaround for many alternative browsers to MSIE. Not too far a stretch for the launcher to be affected by it as well...it may simply be something is breaking the scripting, and that may get it parsing things again.

[Mirna]

This is AKArachnae, dictating to my girlfriend's active account because for some silly reason you're not allowed to use the forums if your account is inactive. All aspects of that page load just fine in any browser. The button lights up, the background's there, it scrolls all the way, which hasn't happened on the rare occasion I've made it in to the launcher. In the Java options, under advanced, Java was not enabled for Mozilla browsers, but enabling it still leads to the error message and inability to access the launcher.

[Raist]

bugger... was hoping it was the usual simple things. been a long time since I've seen mine knacker up like that. Only other thing that comes to mind would be the running as Admin thing with a right-click, but that would just be too easy. But... if you haven't tried it yet, worth a shot I guess.

[Mirna]

I've been trying running as administrator with everything I try, I wish it were so simple. Thanks for the suggestions, though!

[AKArachnae]

After contacting support, we discovered that the culprit was my anti-virus program. Avast! has a feature called Web Shield, and while that was on, it was preventing me from using the launcher correctly. I feel right silly for not discovering this sooner. Hope this information can help anyone else in a similar situation.