Windower Crashing After POL Tries To Boot FFXI

Whenever I use windower and try to load FFXI, Playonline will "stop working" when it goes to launch FFXI in fullscreen. I have tried many steps including:

Running windower as Admin,
Fresh install of FFXI,
Fresh install of Windower,
Restarting my computer,
Disabling UAC,
All graphics drivers are current,
Making sure resolution is the same in both FFXI config and Windower.

Give me a second and I will post Rig details.

ime of this report: 6/3/2015, 17:59:41
Machine name: LENOVO-PC
Operating System: Windows 8.1 64-bit (6.3, Build 9600) (9600.winblue_r9.150322-1500)
Language: English (Regional Setting: English)
System Manufacturer: LENOVO
System Model: 10181
BIOS: I1KT38AUS
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-4460 CPU @ 3.20GHz (4 CPUs), ~3.2GHz
Memory: 8192MB RAM
Available OS Memory: 8124MB RAM
Page File: 2265MB used, 7138MB available
Windows Dir: C:\windows
DirectX Version: DirectX 11
DxDiag Version: 6.03.9600.17415 64bit Unicode

Card name: NVIDIA GeForce GT 720

Just tried to run the game in Windowed mode to see if it was some sort of resolution issue. It crashes in that mode as well. Is Windower just not compatible with WIndows 8.1?

Normally it gives an error, but just in case:

Do you have directplay enabled?

Yesterday, when I was installing FFXI on this PC, it did ask to install DirectPlay. I will check to make sure but I think it is because I can run the game without Windower with no issues whatsoever.

I also just tried to disable all Plugins and add-ons before launching but still crashes upon trying to boot FFXI from Playonline when running Windower.

From experience, Windows 8 (and 8.1) is both compatible and incompatible with windower. It can be compatible for years and then BAM! its not. I tried as many things as I could think of (and have read about) and the only thing that solved it was downgrading to windows 7...and then a year later I went back to 8 and it worked...

that is until it doesn't anymore.

I am not saying you got the curse yet, but if you do, there is not one trick I could find (and I searched high and low) except for the two I mentioned above (and a heard a reinstall is not 100%).

Good luck!

>fresh installs of FFXI and Windower

Did you run FFXI vanilla - not windower version - first?

I was doing some research until I dozed off and it's sounding like the known "unresolved" issue with 8.

https://github.com/Windower/Issues/issues/136

I've done other reading as well, and it looks like it can be a pain/near impossible to isolate.

I'm hoping you installed the "proper" version of POL. Try manually clicking "run as admin" when running it instead of having the box checked.

Aside from that (or a reinstall, or upgrading to Windows 7 instead of 8) it looks like another "possibility" somebody thought was a windows update that borked something, while possible it would seem like it would affect more people if that were the case.

Jutubyaa - I have run the Vanilla version and it works fine. Only with windower does it crash upon loading FFXI from Playonline.

Jetackuu - I installed the Platyonline from the Seekers from Amazon but I will try to install the Windows 7 version from Playonline and recheck to see if that is the issue. Upate: I looked into the link you provided. Definitely experiencing the same symptoms and crashes at the same point he indicated.

One point I noticed in the issue tracker link provided by jet is that the user had to open vanilla for a quest. Afterwards FFXI failed to load from windower PoL.

I too needed to go into vanilla, where I noticed my resolutions were all blanked out. Vanilla would not start with the resos blanked, so I changed them to the correct res. Vanilla loaded ffxi fine, but of course windower never worked again on that install.

That user: flanteus (he is the last post @ 10 days ago) said that he restored to a point before he opened vanilla and it worked for him. I would give that a try if you have a restore point that meets that criterion.

Again, good luck!