FFXIV Crashes randomly, mostly no error message (even after Windows reinstall)

[Splitter31]

Thanks for the response! Windows is updated, and I'm using the dedicated GPU. The drivers are the official latest from NVIDIA.

However, in case someone else is having this problem and nothing seems to fix it, I'm testing a fix that so far has worked extremely well.

I use an external SSD because my system SSD is tiny (just for Windows) and I have a 1TB HDD that is very slow. I was reading about stuff and don't know why, I tried installing on the HDD and to my surprise the game never crashed. The load times were extremely long and players took a lot to appear in cities, but it never crashed. Even tried going to the inn and playing various cutscenes (this used to ask for a crash pretty much).

This left me wondering. The game seems to work fine off the internal HDD but crashed when installed on the external SSD. The SSD isn't faulty, I have many other games on it with absolutely zero issues. So, I have a theory that so far seems to be the case. I'd like Square to see and confirm if this is true.

I think the installer doesn't play quite nice with external SSDs, and the installation process tends to leave little holes that, though the game can be ran, it may sooner or later crash. Mind that this is just the installation process.

So, I tried installing the game on the HDD and then moving it to the SSD (install the game internally and then run it externally). And this seems to do the trick, I've played a lot of MSQ and Roulettes and I haven't had a single crash since I tried this. It may be too soon to be certain, but if anyone else is having this problem and happens to have installed the game on an external drive, this might be the fix. If you have the game on Steam (like me) you'll need to use Steam Mover, as technically the only files that Steam downloads are the ones of the launcher and it won't move patch files. Steam Mover moves the game and leaves a link to make Steam think it's still where you installed the game originally, but runs it from the new location (this new location being the much faster external SSD).

I'd imagine that if this is the case, then one might need to repeat the process everytime a new patch launches. I'd have to test that once 6.1 comes out.

I'll keep playing. If by Friday I don't happen to have a crash, I'll edit the post as solved, to help others having this problem.