PlayOnline Viewer Headache

[Cloudius]

I've been having a problem where POL screens would take forever (5-10min+ each) to load, and it ocationaly times out. It would literally take me 20-30min+ to get through POL. Is this normal? Isnt it client side? why the long ass load time. =/

Also if I d/c, which is pretty often, I have to close POL and restart it if I wanna log back on, if I don't windows would tell me about a problem with it and force closes.

What gives, any1 else experiencing this? any ideas?

[Gergall]

No it isn't normal. For starters, lets check your actual connection speeds:

Broadband Internet Connection Network Speed Testing Tool

Go to the link above and give it a minute or two to load. What is your download speed? What is your upload speed?

[Not Kuno]

I had this happen on my old pc. It was my video card, it showed the POL graphics as kind of shitty, and it would take a million years for anything to happen. Is that what is happening to you?

[Cloudius]

No it isn't normal. For starters, lets check your actual connection speeds:

Broadband Internet Connection Network Speed Testing Tool

Go to the link above and give it a minute or two to load. What is your download speed? What is your upload speed?

That link isnt working for me. I had it allowed by noscript and tried refreshing it, but http://www.internetfrog.com/images/spinner.gif wont change into my numbers.

I had this happen on my old pc. It was my video card, it showed the POL graphics as kind of shitty, and it would take a million years for anything to happen. Is that what is happening to you?

It is retard slow and text look odd sometimes, but graphics are fine, and my laptop is new. Using GeForce 9300M GS 179.48 beta drive (Was 179.24 but that was slow too).

It could be my internet speed, but I dont see why. Are the POL screens being downloaded each time I see them? Even then it can't possibly take 10min to load a few pics and banners =/

[Gergall]

1. Internet Frog is a safe site so you can feel free to open it up in IE in order to get the download and upload numbers. (You've already expressed enough confidence to allow it in NoScript anyway.)

2. Those banners and images do take an annoying amount of time to load. You can bypass SOME of this nonsense if you set up an "FFXI" icon. This causes a small crystal icon to load first (before all the other menus and graphics) and as soon as you click on it, you can taken straight to the FFXI screen in Playonline. For most people this saves about 10-20 seconds, but in your case, it sounds like this might save you several minutes.

To get the crystal icon, open up the FFXI config tool and check the checkbox for "Create an FFXI Icon On My Desktop".
Please note that if you have ever screwed around with your windows registry to make FFXI run in an unsupported higher resolution, clicking OK in the FFXI Config tool is going to overwrite your changes.

When you launch FFXI using the new icon, Playonline will behave exactly the same except that the shortcut crystal will be added, and it will load before any other banners or images.

[Cloudius]

1. Internet Frog is a safe site so you can feel free to open it up in IE in order to get the download and upload numbers. (You've already expressed enough confidence to allow it in NoScript anyway.)

2. Those banners and images do take an annoying amount of time to load. You can bypass SOME of this nonsense if you set up an "FFXI" icon. This causes a small crystal icon to load first (before all the other menus and graphics) and as soon as you click on it, you can taken straight to the FFXI screen in Playonline. For most people this saves about 10-20 seconds, but in your case, it sounds like this might save you several minutes.

To get the crystal icon, open up the FFXI config tool and check the checkbox for "Create an FFXI Icon On My Desktop".
Please note that if you have ever screwed around with your windows registry to make FFXI run in an unsupported higher resolution, clicking OK in the FFXI Config tool is going to overwrite your changes.

When you launch FFXI using the new icon, Playonline will behave exactly the same except that the shortcut crystal will be added, and it will load before any other banners or images.

I use windower and the lil shortcut is there but takes a while to pop, but the worst part is the Play screen.

Got the speed test working and did it twice. First time I got:
Download: 216,888 bps Upload: 70,472 bps QOS: 93%
RTT: 39 ms MaxPause: 236 ms

2nd time:
Download: 177,344 bps Upload: 58,512 bps QOS: 52%
RTT: 38 ms MaxPause: 473 ms
(Not sure if these tests are effected by me or any1 on the network using the internet)

I know it's pretty slow, I recently moved into this. I didn't have this problem back in college, but I had a better connection and a different PC that was running windows XP, so alot changed and Im not sure what is the cause of this. I find it hard to believe that my connection speed has anything to do with the loading of a program that is already installed on my PC.

Isnt there a way to kinda skip POL, or disable all it's banners for a faster load. :<

[Not Kuno]

It could be my internet speed, but I dont see why. Are the POL screens being downloaded each time I see them? Even then it can't possibly take 10min to load a few pics and banners =/

I had something like this, only on POL were there crappy looking text/images (even though in game stuff was fine). I had to change to a different driver version.

[Mayareira]

I've been having a problem where POL screens would take forever (5-10min+ each) to load, and it ocationaly times out. It would literally take me 20-30min+ to get through POL. Is this normal? Isnt it client side? why the long ass load time. =/

5-10 mins? That doesn't sound like a connection/speed issue. PoL load times shouldn't take any longer than posting a message here and if you can post/browse, PoL load times should be breeze. Have you tried reinstalling PoL(you can download from playonline webiste)?

Also if I d/c, which is pretty often, I have to close POL and restart it if I wanna log back on, if I don't windows would tell me about a problem with it and force closes.

That's a rather common bug, not sure if there is anything you can do until SE actually patches it. As far as I know its Vista-only though.

[EternalSnow]

I've been having a problem where POL screens would take forever (5-10min+ each) to load, and it ocationaly times out. It would literally take me 20-30min+ to get through POL. Is this normal? Isnt it client side? why the long ass load time. =/

Also if I d/c, which is pretty often, I have to close POL and restart it if I wanna log back on, if I don't windows would tell me about a problem with it and force closes.

What gives, any1 else experiencing this? any ideas?

I had the same problem yesterday. Not sure why pol was being fcktarded like that.

[Valyana]

Sometimes I need to right-click and hit Refresh to get the page to load properly.