Help Please. Cannot get FFXI to work

[emerle]

Hello. I have been looking for about a week on how to make FFXI work again on my computer. I "quit" like 7 months ago (ya we all have realized none of us will really quit this game, i mean crack) and i am using the same Laptop as before. Bought the laptop brand new about a year ago and i had no problems installing and running FFXI when i first bought it.

I have used the Steam download to install the game, same as i did before. I have updated POL and FFXI but when i push "play" i get the following message: Terminated as an error occurred in Final Fantasy XI. Failed to Initialize Direct3D. Please check that this computer has the required specifications to run FFXI.

My computer specs are as follows:
Windows 7 64 Bit
6144MB Ram
DirectX Version:11
Standard VGA Graphics Adapter: Intel Sandybridge Mobile Graphics Chipset
Intel Core i3-2310 CPU @ 2.10 GHZ

I appreciate any and all help regarding this matter. If you need any additional information to help me, please let me know. Thanks again.

[Churchill]

Run POL as administrator/windows sp2/3?

[emerle]

Ya i have tried all that kind of stuff many times. I have also reformated my computer and have deleted all FFXI and POL files as well as STEAM and redownloaded and re-updated 2 times. Still same crap. I am 100% Positive this laptop can run FFXI because i have done it before. Like i said before, this is a vairly new laptop (bought it around a year ago)

[Sithel]

I seen issues like this before with Windows 7 and Directx 11, It could be that ffxi needs Directx 9, you could try one of these two links and that may/should fix it.

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/downl...ils.aspx?id=35

or

http://download.cnet.com/Microsoft-D...-10305889.html

[emerle]

Just tried what Sithel suggested but after download and installation, i Run DxDiag to make sure it installed, it still says i am Running Directx 11. I restarted my computer to check again. Any suggestions?

[Helel]

I've had that problem before. I think it was either a resolution problem or video driver problem. Try messing with resolutions.

[emerle]

My computer, when i right click on destop and the go to Screen resolution only has 2 available resolution options: 800 X 600 and 1024 X 768. Tried both of the resolutions.... No changes...

Thanks again to everyone who is trying to help. Please don't be shy about posting suggestions, i will try anything at this point.

[Gwynplaine]

Try a different graphic card driver.

[Sithel]

Are you using Windower? If so you would have to change the resolution settings through the Launcher.ini file within the windower folder, but at this point it sounds like a video card driver problem.

Also, I've ran that directx 9patch before as well and it still listed mine as directx 11, weird it didn't fix the issue for you. Seeing that you mentioned Direct3d , I looked at mine and made a screen shot of it showing that its enabled, does yours say that ? If its not and should be, I'm not sure where you would enable that at. Here's the pic of my setting within Dxdiag

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y27...GTO/dxdiag.jpg

[emerle]

Ya my directX Features say the following:

DirectDraw Acceleration: Not Available
Direct3D Acceleration: Not Available
AGP Texture Acceleration: Not Available

sooooooooo....... something is jacked up.

[TheDangerousDave]

Try a VPN

[emerle]

Still so far nothing has worked

[Churchill]

I have heard of some issues with people running Windower/FFXI itself out of the steam download. Unless someone has experience with it and chimes in, I would torrent a new install.iso and just input your character data from there. Could even start now as you keep troubleshooting so you're not waiting on it as a last ditch effort.

[Byrthnoth]

You have to open FFXI once without windower before windower will pick it up. If you're trying to run Windower with it, use the GUI version and make sure you click x64. Neither of those problems are the one you're having.

I'm not sure why direct 3D or whatever is failing on your laptop, but I also haven't used a sandybridge graphics adapter. There have apparently been flaws in SandyBridge chipsets? Have you tried to play any other graphics intensive games on your computer? You might want to run the benchmark for FFXIV to see how the computer is doing in general:
http://www.finalfantasyxiv.com/media/benchmark/na/

[emerle]

Well i just bought this from Amazon to see if i get the same results.... this is the most rediculous shit ever, a 1 year old laptop is not running a 10 year old game.

[nekura]

If your dxdiag is reporting all that stuff is unavailable I doubt a new download is going to help.

[Nitrous24]

if those are the only 2 resolutions you have available. You have no video card drivers. Find the drivers needed for your laptop video card.

edit: Also, make sure either UAC is turned off, or you're running everything ffxi related as administrator. The black screen that happens crashes POL.

[emerle]

Yes i have UAC turned off and i will try to find some more drivers. Probably just going to call Dell tomorrow and have they send me links to drivers for my Video card. Also, can you buy a new graphics card for a laptop? I would like to just buy one of the graphics cards listed as approved by SE to run FFXI but i have no idea if you can do this. I know absolutly nothing about changing hardware on computers.

[xopher]

You're using an on-board GPU that is not compatible with FFXI.

No you cannot upgrade the GPU in a laptop.

[emerle]

Like i said before though, i have ran FFXI on this laptop before.

So what u are saying is that i had some wierd configuration that somehow ran FFXI and i will unlikely be able to figure out what it was?

Sounds like i gotta buy a new comp..........