Workaround to get FFXI on Vista

[Jafar]

ARGH! After the re-insall, the Installation button is STILL not on my playonline menu. There is no problem at all running Playonline Viewer on my PC. There is no problem at all playing FFXI on my PC. There is no problem at all with my computer accepting the installation and the updates. The problem is STARTING the installation itself from the Vana'Collection DVD. So if anyone knows where I can find a standalone CoP install, I think I could make it work from there.

Alternatively, since POL is having the same problem no matter which disc its installed from, I think the problem is coming from the files I am copying from my desktop. If anybody would like to copy their PlayOnlineViewer folder (updated) for me, or zip it or whatever, that would work too I believe. Thanks in advance for any help, and I'm sorry for being so high maintanence about this. It's just flatout not working.

[Calina]

ARGH! After the re-insall, the Installation button is STILL not on my playonline menu. There is no problem at all running Playonline Viewer on my PC. There is no problem at all playing FFXI on my PC. There is no problem at all with my computer accepting the installation and the updates. The problem is STARTING the installation itself from the Vana'Collection DVD. So if anyone knows where I can find a standalone CoP install, I think I could make it work from there.

Alternatively, since POL is having the same problem no matter which disc its installed from, I think the problem is coming from the files I am copying from my desktop. If anybody would like to copy their PlayOnlineViewer folder (updated) for me, or zip it or whatever, that would work too I believe. Thanks in advance for any help, and I'm sorry for being so high maintanence about this. It's just flatout not working.

i looked couldent find any cop dl's online all i could find was a few copy's of the collection and ToAU

[Jafar]

I feel like such a pain in the butt posting over and over like this, but I thought I would post a picture to show what my problem is.

http://www.valkurmemperor.com/images/PlayOnline.jpg

Is anyone else's Install button missing? I've tried installing from the Vana Collection without ToAU built into it, and I've tried installing from the original 4-disc set. When I intall from the 4-disc set, the Install button is still missing like it is now, but I could actually install FFXI because that install boots automatically from the individual discs. The problem with that is that I could never get CoP that way.

I have also tried installing using someone else's update POL.exe file so I know that it isn't a problem with my install or my files. It has to have something to do with the way my computer is setup, but I can't figure it out. Anybody have any ideas??

[Jafar]

Okay, this should be my last post, and only because I want to head off the problem if anyone else has it. The solution was right under my nose the entire time. With the Vana collection you can open the CD with Windows Explorer and there are 3 folders (4 if you have the 2007 version) that are labled INS1 INS2, etc...

INS1 is FFXI main game
INS2 is RoZ expansion
INS3 is CoP expansion
INS4 is ToAU expansion

each has its own setup.exe file that will install FFXI games and expansions. I still have NO CLUE why that install button isn't in my POL viewer, but this is a solution to that problem either way.

Thanks for being patient with me for those that tried to help/read my posts. :D

EDIT: Thanks to Misfitwonder on Asura for giving me the final solution in the end. He has also posted a nice patch d/l on his site at http://styxrtp.com/blog/software/playon ... sta_patch/ . It does the same thing that the manual way does, but it's much faster.

[Eander]

Alright, I just got FFXI working on Vista Ultimate. I expected to have a lot more trouble than I did. Here's the process I went through to do it:

First, I had a working POL/FFXI directory on a separate partition from my desired install path. I suppose you wouldn't technically need to have it on a different partition if you had enough room on the one you wanted to install on, but I didn't, so whateves. Anyway, if you have enough room on the partition you want to install on, just rename your old \Program Files\PlayOnline folder to PlayOnline.bak

I also had UAC turned off because, beyond anything else, it annoyed the ever-living fuck out of me. You can disable UAC by doing Windows+R (Run) > msconfig > Click the Tools Tab > Click Disable UAC > Click Launch. It may want you to restart to get the change to take.

From there, I ran the POL installer from the original 5 disc set. I had to set the setup.exe file to run in XP SP2 compatibility mode (which other posts in this thread describe how to do). After installing POL, I installed just plain vanilla FFXI (also in XP SP2 compat. mode). For those with the original US discs, this is the installer that runs on the discs labelled 1-3.

It's a shame that this is necessary, because all we really need here is for the installers to add their entries to the registry. The installers don't do this until the end of the install, so you have to copy all the files, waste all the time, blah blah blah.

Anyway, I digress. After the 2nd installer finished, I copied the SquareEnix subfolder from my old, good directory to the newly created PlayOnline directory. Vista asked about 3 different times if I was sure I wanted to overwrite. It took about 15-25 minutes for me to copy the 7.85 GB from one drive to the other.

Once the copy is finished, open up the SquareEnix\PlayOnlineViewer folder. Right click on pol.exe and make sure it's set to run in XP SP2 compat. mode. From there, fire up POL. When I first started it up, it gave me a POL network error saying it couldn't confirm the version. However, I just told it to retry and it went through and started checking.

Provided your previous POL was up to date, it should just check all your files and restart POL. If not, it may download a few files here and there.

When POL restarts, log in and get to the FFXI "Play Screen". Again, once I hit Play it did the same thing of saying it couldn't determine the version I was running. I just hit retry and it went through. This process is more or less the same as with POL, except it takes a lot longer. Mine checked all 17000~ files, downloaded about 5 (Undoing Brandson's UI I imagine), then fired up without a hitch.

All I had to do to get windower working was set Launcher to run in compatibility mode on top of pol.exe already running in compatibility mode. I had no trouble loading and unloading plugins, at least the common ones I use (TParty, Distance, Expwatch).

Hope this helps. For comparison's sake, I'm running:

Vista Ultimate
AMD Athlon64 3500+
4GB RAM
ATI X800 PCI Xpress
Normal 7200rpm IDE drives, nothing speedy/fancy.