Question About Slow Down

[hexagram23]

First off, some info. I have a Nvidia Ge-Force 8800 GTS 640 MB, using Vista on a Core 2 Quad with 3 Gigs of RAM. My drivers are 175.16 BETA.

I know Vista/Nvidia/FFXI doesn't get along but I have a few random questions anyway.

The Vista I have is 32-bit, and can only download the 175.16 BETA because the official 175.16 tells me "your system isn't 32-bit" every time I try to install it. Any idea why this is? It's obviously 32-bit, I'm looking at the info right now.

Also, whenever I turn corners for example in Jeuno or Whitegate, there is a second or two of slow down. Over all the computer/graphics card runs the game very well, but this is sort of weird. Is it common? Also I noticed massive slowdown around the tele crystals (Holla, Mea, etc.) and during graphic-intensive CSs, which is also weird since the game has little slowdown in places like Dynamis, Campaign, etc.
Any ideas on this?

Lastly, I noticed some weird shapes "popping" into and out of the sky in Western Altepa, only for a second then disappearing.

EDIT:

One more thing too....I was told setting the Affinity for POL/FFXI/etc. to 1 processor might help out with slow down, etc. since it only uses 1 proc anyway....but whenever I go to Task Manager and try to set affinity for POL it says "the operation could not be completed, access denied". Why is that?

Thanks in advance.

[Cephius]

It seems like your drivers are not functioning correctly. I see this a lot with Nvidia cards. Try the cleaning process that I posted in this thread and see if it solves your problem. If you still have issue after this post here and we'll try some more stuff.

[hexagram23]

Hey buddy thanks for the info.

I actually did exactly what that thread said, so I dunno if it's the drivers or not. When I was done, did Safe Mode, Sweeper, the works. No drivers on my computer for Nvidia, etc. then downloaded and installed the new ones. I actually did this for the BETA, normal, then the BETA again, 3 times. Total sweeps of the drivers, deleted them, etc.

[Cephius]

Hm really wierd, as for the priority, you can't set it in the task manager anyway because every time you bring the focus away from FFXI, windows will assume its in the background and reassign the priority. There's a windower plugin that can set priority for you, look on their website for it.

As for your drivers, in my experience the 174.74 beta drivers worked best for me, see if those are still available maybe?

[hexagram23]

Is ICE the program you're talking about? I downloaded it but I don't understand what I'm supposed to do with it. The instructions on the site seem to be translated sort of poorly.