Video crashes, input goes undetected, while audio continues

[Raymeo]

Hello!

CPU: Intel Core2 Quad CPU Q6600 @ 2.40 GHz 2.39 GHz

RAM: 4.00 GB

OS: Windows 7 Professional 64-bit

GPU: Nvidia GeForce 8800 GT

Video Drivers: GeForce v320.49

Mode: Windowed Borderless

Issue: I ran this game fine on Desktop Standard settings all through Beta 4 and Early Access. Starting on launch day I began running into an issue where my video will go blank. At this point my monitor will say No Signal Detected, but the game's music and ambient noise will continue to play through my headphones. Once this happens, any input to the keyboard however does not initiate the expected in-game sounds. What's more is that Windows commands -- CTRL+ALT+DEL, CTRL+ALT+ESC, ALT+TAB, WINDOWS+TAB, WINDOWS -- causes no effect either. I would expect the sound to stop at the very least as these commands should cause the window to become inactive, but that's not the case. I can sit and wait for several minutes, and the machine never recovers, staying in this state until I force shut off through holding down the power button.

This first occurred for me in New Gridania. I had played for several hours that day without issue. Then I was standing AFK for a couple of minutes by the aetheryte crystal there in New Gridania, trying to take a few bites of my dinner, when suddenly this crash occurred out of the blue. I stopped playing for the rest of the day after that.

The next time this occurred was the following day, in... Aleport? Is that where you go to initiate the level 40~ quest that asks you to talk to the yellowjackets in order to find out why the Isles of Umbra are closed? Whatever the name of that place is, I was in the middle of the NPC's dialogue that begins that quest when this crash happened. Again, this happened suddenly at a seemingly random moment after several hours of smooth gameplay. Once more, I stopped playing for the rest of the day after that.

Finally, today, I played smoothly for about an hour and made it to the level 44~ quest to face Garuda for the first time. This crash happened a minute or two after ending the cut scene where you fly the airship into the vortex to reach Garuda. I triggered the duty finder accessibility for Garuda, and stood where the airship had just landed for a couple of minutes while waiting for my queue timer, when suddenly the game crashed in the same old way. This time I did a hard reset of the computer, logged back in, and queued up for Garuda again. I made it into a party, and about ten minutes into the Garuda encounter I crashed and had to do a hard reset again. So booted up, updated my video drivers to the latest version as shown in my computer specs above, and then logged back in. At this point I queued up for Garuda for a third time, and the same thing happened -- made it into the battle, and about ten minutes in it crashed. I did another hard reset, logged back in, turned all graphics settings to their lowest value -- lower than desktop standard wherever possible -- and queued up for Garuda for a fourth time. Got into my third attempt at Garuda, and crashed again for the fourth time that day, again about ten minutes into the encounter.

Side note: I always make sure that there are no unnecessary background processes running before playing FFXIV, in an effort to increase performance. So it probably isn't related to any other programs or processes on my computer.

This appears to be something that can't be fixed by lowering my settings or updating my drivers. My computer meets the minimum system requirements for the game, and ran it without any issues for several days, including forays through many of the game's most graphically intense group encounters. What could the issue be all of a sudden?

[jimm0thy]

I use to have this issue in beta phase 2. I did find that pressing alt+tab a few times would eventually work and let me cancel the game from the task manager, but it went away in phase 3.