Unable to start PlayOnline?

[Uzor]

Hello!

Currently, I am unable to start PlayOnline. Not sure when exactly it started; last time I played was about 8 days or so if I remember correctly.

Today when I came home from work and tried to login, I did the ususal: run as administrator on Windower. Everything went fine, until I pressed the arrow key to open PlayOnline. It gave me the message that Windower crashed. I thought that maybe Windower updating somehow bugged it, so I tried an old version of Windower.

Same problem there, unable to start. So I tried running PlayOnline directly; nothing happens. Computer is giving the spinning thingy, and then it just stops. No error message or anything. Doesn't even load it, and computer acts like I never even tried starting it.

I thought that perhaps Windower got corrputed somehow, so I uninstalled it and reinstalled it. Same thing; unable to load.

I'm using Windower 8; any idea what's wrong?

[Ratatapa]

It's a sign to stop playing XI


Did you try to uninstall and réinstall pol?

[Uzor]

Yeah; no go.

[dejet]

I mean it does not sound like a windower thing if you can not get into FFXI the normal way.

[Uzor]

Exactly, and I can't figure out what the problem is. Everything else works like normal, just not PlayOnline.

[Kohan]

Have you done anything else to your computer since you played it last? New graphic drivers, rearranging any files, installing any software—anything at all? (I wouldn't count normal use, e.g., opening and closing files, but practically anything else goes.) While these things may seem unrelated, you never know. For example, there's an uninformative crash that Windows 7 users may encounter whenever they try to right-click files in Windows Explorer, and it's related to having recent versions of WinZip installed—even though you're not doing anything involving zip files. You could be experiencing something similarly unexpected.

[Uzor]

Not that I can think of, been busy with work and stuff, which is why I haven't been on. So I haven't really had a need to install new stuff. The only thing I can remember doing on the computer is reading bg, reading some news, listening to some music, streaming some stuff on Netflix and downloading some TV-shows not on Netflix, like game of thrones.

Edit: come to think of it, I did install some stupid game on Steam that uses punkbstr or some stupid shit like that for anti-cheat, same thing a lot of online games use nowadays. Can it be that?

[Kohan]

Edit: come to think of it, I did install some stupid game on Steam that uses punkbstr or some stupid shit like that for anti-cheat, same thing a lot of online games use nowadays. Can it be that?

Yes. Absolutely. First, try forcefully shutting down PunkBuster and see if Windower runs then. If not, try uninstalling that, rebooting, and running PlayOnline again. If it doesn't work, copy your PlayOnline directory elsewhere, uninstall it, reinstall it, and then (before running it) copy and paste your former backup over it to avoid having to redownload all the updates. Then try again.

[Uzor]

I'll try it tomorrow, have to head to bed now. Thanks for your help, I'll keep you updated if it works or not

[Uzor]

Yup, now it works. Thank you very much Kohan

[Kohan]

Yup, now it works. Thank you very much Kohan

You're welcome. Keep this sort of thing in mind for the future in case it ever happens again.