FFXI Crashing Log

[Noob]

Since returning to the game earlier this year, I've been getting random crashes. The way the crash goes is:

1.) Screen goes black for a second, followed by it going to grey.
2.) Sound immediately goes into a stuttering sound. Best way to describe this sound is the sound heard from a boat's engine.

When this happens, I can hit CTRL + ALT + DEL and access windows task manager. Once I do this, I'm returned to the desktop screen and receive the POL has stopped responding error.

This happens randomly and I have no idea what's causing it. I thought it might be my HDD corrupting, so I swapped a new one in and performed a fresh installation of Windows 7 and FFXI to troubleshoot. Crash still happened. I then thought it might've been a corrupted RAM sector, and ran memtest on both of my sticks of RAM individually. After 6 passes, both showed no problems. My RAM is 8 GB(2 x 4GB) Corsair XMS DDR3. Crash still happened. I then thought it might be one of my graphics cards, so I tried playing for awhile with just one. Crash still happened. I then removed the card and put just the second card in. Crash still happened. My cards are both Nvidia GeForce GTX 570 HDs. I also tried disabling SLI as well as removing all additional Nvidia Control Panel features such as AA and AF. Crash still kept happening. I then thought maybe it may be due to my Nvidia drivers being too new for FFXI and did a search on what drivers had the best results, and 266.85 appeared to be the last approved Nvidia drivers by SE for FFXI, so I uninstalled my current drivers (306.23) and installed 266.85. Crash still happened.

I can't figure out what's going on. I've tried everything I can think of. Their's no way this problem is due to overheating. My CPU and graphics cards temperatures are always at their lowest, even after having FFXI on for hours at a time, and I've never even once overclocked my CPU or graphics cards. My CPU is an i7-2600k Sandy Bridge @3.4Ghz stock speed.

I accessed Windows reliability monitor and was able to see all the crashes displayed, and this is what it showed for FFXI's latest crash:

http://i45.tinypic.com/2j2xdfd.jpg

[Buffy]

You've done a good job troubleshooting. When you tested the video cards, by swapping them one at a time, did you check the PCI-E they plug into on the motherboard? If you used the same PCI-E expansion slot each time, you might be able to eliminate it furthe by using the other PCI-E slot. Regardless, based on your troubleshooting steps, I would lean towards it being your motherboard.

[Noob]

You've done a good job troubleshooting. When you tested the video cards, by swapping them one at a time, did you check the PCI-E they plug into on the motherboard? If you used the same PCI-E expansion slot each time, you might be able to eliminate it furthe by using the other PCI-E slot. Regardless, based on your troubleshooting steps, I would lean towards it being your motherboard.

Nope. I thought when only one graphics card was connected, it had to be in the top PCI-E slot. I'm going to test that out and see what happens. Really hoping it doesn't turn out to be the motherboard.

[Mafai]

Don't use CTRL-ALT-DEL to get into task manager. If you to to that lock screen, your FFXI will crash everytime.

This isn't why your crashing, but its why you crash everytime you view task manager.

A couple other ways:
1. CTRL-SHIFT-ESCAPE
2. If windows vista/7 windows button > type task and use view running processes
3. Right click empty spot on taskbar and hit Start task manager.

How big of a power supply do you have?

[Noob]

Thanks for letting me know about the alternate ways to access window task manager without crashing POL, never knew about them.

As for my PSU, I'm using a Corsair AX1200.

[Sithel]

I read on some other forums about people getting random crashes with newer geforce cards. Inside the game menu under config > Misc. ,you try turning off shadows and weather effects to see if that solves the issue?

[Pru]

Myself and another LS member have been experiencing an almost identical problem; screen going black (looks like the monitor has been switched off), the sound will stutter for 1-2 seconds then everything will be back as normal other than FFXI having crashed and an error message in the taskbar/nvidia control panel saying something along the lines of ‘nvidia drivers crashed but windows has fixed the problem’.

The LS member has a 670 and said after changing the physx settings from auto-select to the card itself and updating to the newest drivers he hasn’t noticed this happening at all. My 680 on the other hand does still run into this error but after having changed the physx settings and updating to the newest driver it is a very rare occurrence (maybe twice a month).

As to what exactly causes this I have no idea; it only happens when FFXI is running, no other game/piece of software does this.

[Subadai]

At the very least, turn down UAC a notch so Windows doesn't dim the screen when it wants your attention; dimming the screen will crash FFXI for sure. The message "the video card crashed but Windows has recovered" means that the video card drivers did crash, but Windows was able to totally reset the card and start fresh, without making you reboot. Unfortunately, most games can't recover from a complete reset. Also try disabling your anti-virus, I've heard reports of AV software (esp. Avast, although I use it with no problems) causing the video card to crash. If it turns out to be the AV, get a different one.

[Noob]

Tried turning off all effects, including battle/weather/footstep effects, along with shadows and crash still happened. Now trying a difference PCI-E slot for my graphics card.

UAC is turned to the lowest possible setting. I have my Windows 7 super administrator account unlocked and only use it. As far as my antivirus goes, I'm using Microsoft Security Essentials and MalwareBytes.

EDIT
Tried a different PCI-E slot and connecting my monitor to the 2nd slot on my graphics card instead of the first. Still crashing......I'm running out of things to try. This is really getting annoying. It absolutely sucks knowing that at any time while playing, my game can and will crash. Sometimes I can go for hours and hours without it happening. Other times, it happens only an hour following initial login. One time I had it happen after a few hours of playing, then upon logging back in, it immediately happened again.

Anyone have any other ideas? Haven't tried disabling my CPU's hyperthreading or turbo boost options in the BIOS (both are on by default). Could that have anything to do with it? Could it be my RAM's default voltage settings? I've never touched my RAM's voltage but could that possibly help?

[Sumy]

This happened to me when I was using a GTX5600 GTX when I upgraded the drivers - I rolled him back, and I was fine.

However, I decided to upgrade my card yesterday (finally) to a 660ti, and now that I've installed the 306.97 drivers, every bard song, or spell causes it to crash -- I can hang out in any zone for HOURS, but as soon as someone casts a spell or song, I crash. I tried the 310.33 Beta drivers and same issue. Tried setting physx to the card... no change. Tried setting PhysX to the CPU, and still no change.

[Noob]

This happened to me when I was using a GTX5600 GTX when I upgraded the drivers - I rolled him back, and I was fine.

However, I decided to upgrade my card yesterday (finally) to a 660ti, and now that I've installed the 306.97 drivers, every bard song, or spell causes it to crash -- I can hang out in any zone for HOURS, but as soon as someone casts a spell or song, I crash. I tried the 310.33 Beta drivers and same issue. Tried setting physx to the card... no change. Tried setting PhysX to the CPU, and still no change.

I'm definitely sure at this point that it's entirely a GPU/drivers issue because I just turned my GPU fan settings up and when the crash occurs, it causes them to stop, then return to the default speed.

This really sucks. Only thing I can think of doing is going back further to even older drivers than 266.85 and seeing if it fixes this. Going to test some other drivers out over the next day or so and see what happens.

[Sumy]

I dont have that luxury, 306.23 are the OLDEST Nvidia drivers that even recognise the 660ti -- which I'm downloading now.

[Noob]

I dont have that luxury, 306.23 are the OLDEST Nvidia drivers that even recognise the 660ti -- which I'm downloading now.

Wow....that beyond sucks. You're going to have to buy an older card just for FFXI. I'm contemplating doing the same and just keeping my 570s for when I get the itch to play newer games.

[cdgreg]

When my previous video card shit the bed I purchased a Nvidia from a local family shop and put it in, along with the new card came new problems. After trying anything and everything I could find I gave up. I sold the card and bought a AMD Radeon HD 6670 with a mail in rebate. It end up costing me like $30-40 after rebate, since then ffxi has worked like a charm. No more stupid lag from tele points, confluxes, etc. I don't know how high end any of your systems are, but for this old workhorse the AMD Radeon is working like a charm.

[Sumy]

Well, after reading up on the official forums a few folks reported that Turning off weather and shadows stopped the crashing -- something about the two effects making calls to an old unsupported DirectX9 routine. I was able to get it to run ok with JUST turing off shadows so far. Bard songs and all...

[Noob]

Can anybody tell me which series of Nvidia cards would be best to play the game with, without all the bullshit? I'm guessing the GTX 3xx series would be best for it since the 4xx series started using DirectX9? I'd like to be able to play the game like I am now with a background resolution of twice my monitor (1920x1080), drawdistance set to 5.0, and all effects on without experiencing lag, with exception to congested areas where the engine lags natively, regardless of your specs.

Would anyone happen to know? I've tried absolutely everything under the sun to stop these bullshit GPU crashes, and I think it's time for me to just pick up an older card for this game. I'd just use the older card while playing FFXI and my two 570s when playing other games. Pretty sick of all the problems trying to play it on a newer card. I know a few people in game who're experiencing the same problems on newer cards.

[Subadai]

I use a GTX 550 without any problems. Shadows and weather effects are on, v 306.23 of the driver and a few versions before that.

[Matthias]

i'm having problems on my GTX 670 as well, problems that go away when i turn off shadows & weather. it seems to be a widespread problem for the 600 series of geforce cards.

mine is still under warranty though so i can return it at anytime, one of my tech-geek friends told me that in general ffxi responds better to radeon cards, and advised me to try that. can anyone confirm that the shadows/weather problem does not occur with a 7950 or 7970?

[Noob]

Figured out what my problem was. Had absolutely nothing to do with anything within my PC. It was probably the only thing I didn't try in my quest to troubleshoot the problem: unplug the PC from the UPS

Unplugging the PC from the UPS and plugging it directly into the wall solved the problem. Apparently my PC wasn't receiving enough power from it, primarily my GPU while gaming. This would cause the GPU to crash and my PC to shut down. What a relief to know it's not a hardware or software problem, at least within the PC that is.

[Ezekieal]

Nvidia huh? Now theres your problem only kidding.

Maybe switching over to a new radeon card might be better if you are going to buy a new card though.

HD7970 Ghz here and not a single issue with ffxi, or any other game/software for that matter.

Anyway I hope nvidia release some new drivers for you guys soon, must suck to have a new card and not be able to play ffxi

Edit: yes Mattias shadows/weather and everything else is at maximum possible settings, incuding draw distance.