Vista Crashes?

[Airou]

Normally i just kinda put up with it but i suddenly thought maybe theres some sort of solution lol.

Well basically from time to time, specifically campaign >.>, while playing on Vista PC (Using Windower), FFXI likes to crash on me. Happens to me about once a day and i was wondering if there was any update to make it stop. Usually when it crashes it says near the tray icon "Display Driver has stopped responding but has recovered" Not really sure what that means, im a noob when it comes to computer technical issues. Any help is appreciated.

 

[Georgebobbilly]

That used to happen to me, but only from time to time, and only when I seemd to have 5-10 webpages open and doing any number of other things. Even then though it only happened to me once every month or so... hasn't happened since the pup made me break my computer and I had to reload.

 

[Elohim]

What it means is that Vista is a piece of shit operating system. I have the same problem, there was nothing I could do about it. I turned all the graphics options except for resolution down all the way and it's been mostly stable since. (e.g. Turned off mip-mapping, enabled texture compression, etc). You can also set the clipping distance low and reduce the max number of characters drawn from the in-game config menu.

 

[Airou]

I thought i heard of some sort of patch or driver update that helped with the issue.

Also one thing that crashes me for sure is if i load a program that needs to ask for permission. Whenever i load something and that yellow box comes up that says "Allow/Deny" for example, Ventrillo, it will crash POL instantly.

 

[Acks]

Try using an omega driver. http://www.omegadrivers.net/

 

[Airou]

I play on Laptop sorry didnt mention that, it says the Vista Laptop drivers are "MIA"

 

[Tyrath]

I think the game might be crashing because your video card is overheating. I've had the same problem with playing Fallout, never on FFXI though. It happened less when I got a cooling station for my laptop though.

I would just try playing the game on lower graphics settings. Also try to change your Windows Color and Appearance to Vista Basic from Vista Aero.

 

[Nordin]

I think its just vista and windower that are causing the problem. Whenever Vista asks for my permission on something windower crashes, absolutely a pain. I'm positive its not my graphics card overheating as I run a GTX 280, I think there is a way to turn off the permission thing, but I would rather not, are there any other solutions to this problem?

 

[Euphacent]

Whoa, lot's of Vista hate. It's not Vista's fault that the game wasn't designed with it in mind. I run Vista64 on both my laptop and desktop. FFXI runs like crap on my laptop even though it has an 8800gts mobile gpu, and it runs like a champ on my desktop. It really comes down to the CPU power in Vista for FFXI.

I don't have any problems with crashing, except for when I /shutdown or try to exit to POL, but even then I think it's just due to windower.

 

[Tyrath]

I think its just vista and windower that are causing the problem. Whenever Vista asks for my permission on something windower crashes, absolutely a pain. I'm positive its not my graphics card overheating as I run a GTX 280, I think there is a way to turn off the permission thing, but I would rather not, are there any other solutions to this problem?

No. I turned off the permission thing, because lets face it, its useless. Its like an overprotective mom who has your good being in mind but sometimes goes a little overboard.

 

[Pascal]

I thought i heard of some sort of patch or driver update that helped with the issue.

Also one thing that crashes me for sure is if i load a program that needs to ask for permission. Whenever i load something and that yellow box comes up that says "Allow/Deny" for example, Ventrillo, it will crash POL instantly.

This is caused not so much by UAC but by Secure Desktop Mode, which the UAC prompt runs inside of. http://cybernetnews.com/vista-uac-secure-desktop-explained/ It can be disabled http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/wind...stop-blacking-out-the-screen-in-windows-vista without disabling UAC.

As to your original problem, from what I have read most people seem to correct this by upgrading to the latest drivers.
On my wife's computer which gets it (the latest drivers did not fix it), I believe the problem is caused by the fact that I'm exceeding the 32bit address limit. After her video card crashes with the error, I notice other devices in her computer start to complain that there is insufficient resources for their drivers to start. If I remove some of the memory from her computer (thus freeing address space), the problem goes away. I'll know for sure if I ever get around to upgrading her to Vista64. If you have the latest drivers already, you may want to see if you have similar symptoms.

 

[Pascal]

This is a trick we use at work to do various tasks and keep UAC from getting in the way, but without disabling UAC.

http://msmvps.com/blogs/martinzugec/archive/2008/05/16/ignore-uac-for-specific-programs.aspx

I tried it on FFXI and the game launches fine, but I did not fully test it. There is a link at the bottom about how to change short-cuts, so you will not have to right click everytime you want to launch the program.

:Edit
Been running the game this way for a few days with no problems.