Ffxi Screen Is Freezing But Can Still Hear Audio

i multibox 6 characters on one pc for the last 8 years, but recently i've been having crashes more often. they used to happen just overnight while the game was on but i was sleeping, but not its happening even when i'm playing. and whats even more different is one of the characters' video is freezing but the game isnt freezing. they can still move around and i can hear sounds. but the screen is stuck.

which is why i'm guessing the ffxi community is pointing towards the graphics card.

but i dont know jack about tech. they said to update it and uninstall/reinstall, which i did but the problem is still happening. so i was wondering if i need to update the card since i'm playing 6 characters (on a 20+ year old game) on my pc (only 5 years old). or do i just need to adjust some settings in the cards app?

I use DGVoodoo to improve the graphics so it doesnt look like a 20 year old game. many others use it without this problem happening, but i know it may be part of the problem so including a photo of my settings.

I also use a third party program called Windower that allows me to (among other things) play multiple accounts at once, and i talked with the group that runs that program and they were the ones who suggested it was the graphics card.

so i'm basically trying to find out:

A) do i need to tweak something in the graphics card settings

B) do i need to tweak something in the dg voodoo settings

C) A and B
D) do i need a new graphics card

E) quit using DGVoodoo all together

Thanks for any help/info.

UPDATE:

the freeze just happened again, but i just noticed something i didnt notice before because usually the freeze happened in an area i was in for hours. but i had just checked to make sure all my characters weren't frozen, then continued on in the game. a few mins later i went to switch characters and i noticed one of the characters was frozen. BUT the image on screen was from an area i was in an hour prior.

Sounds to me like your gpu is getting long in the tooth. How long since you upgraded?

It seems unlikely to be a software or configuration issue, since nobody else has reported the same in the community. I would also assume failing hardware, but keep in mind that troubleshooting something like this can be extremely tricky. Check system log in eventviewer for any errors that may be tied to your GPU.

If you're the type of person that doesn't log out at night, like most 6boxers, you should also consider that consumer GPUs aren't really designed for 24/7 operation. 5 years running near 24/7 in a standard case with middle of the road cooling is probably end of life. Obviously they can last much longer if kept clean and cool, as in mining rigs.

i bought the pc new 5 years ago. so 5 years ago lol

has been awhile since i've cleaned it. it's just been sitting in a corner for the last year so i didnt even think about cleaning the fans and stuff. i'll try cleaning it and see if that helps. thanks for the information.

I had this exact problem, its probably a memory leak from some addon/program/other and your PC being outdated. Or an issue with DGVOODO and your specs currently. This drove me insane for ages, it would always happen in the worst moments too.

I had to upgrade my PC for it to finally go away, its probably some leak that causes your game to freeze. I had the exact same freeze where the game is still playing and you can do things/;hear music but the image is frozen. I don't know if it was the improvement in RAM or just a clean slate on a new PC, but I don't have it anymore. I did keep everything on 24/7, but I had tons of tabs open in Chrome and all the usual things multiboxers have.

I will say, my laptop I paid over 3000 for... Asus rog swift something G7 idk. I had it for literally a year, and I left it on 24/7 and really it only had 3 instances of XI. A year later it froze and just kept doing that. Not this kind of freeze, but the entire laptop just randomly froze even with a fresh install of windows etc.

I took it for repairs and they said its probably the motherboard or a chip. It feels like after all these years they can never accurately *** these things to tell you exactly whats wrong, all you can do is consume and buy the next product, ridiculous. I would get warranty on anything you have now, that was my mistake. SO if you upgrade make sure you do lol

I just want to clarify a couple things here. Running out of memory won't outright freeze your computer. You have multiple memory limits:
-The process itself can only address 2GB(4GB with large address aware patch)
-The OS has it's physical memory, however much RAM you have installed
-Windows uses a page file, which allows it to store the contents of RAM on your hard drive when your running applications want more than your physical total

So, if you're using 'too much RAM' from windows' perspective, the least recently touched things get saved to page file on hard disk to make room. This slows performance, but doesn't freeze graphics. If you have a page file limit set, and you exceed that, you'll see errors when memory fails to allocate.

None of this applies to FFXI in most cases, because the 2/4GB limit is likely much lower than the amount of RAM/page available on your pc. I don't see any reason to believe your issue was caused by a memory leak or 'PC being outdated', it is almost certainly a dying GPU. Do you have any informed reason to believe otherwise..?

If you have components that have already deformed from heat damage, cleaning won't help. There is some possibility the symptom is being caused by overheating in real time, but it's much lower than the possibility that 5 years of running 24/7 with no cleaning caused some permanent damage.

Possibly unrelated, but I'm on Windows 10 and I often have freezing/lag issues if I leave the game running for more than a day or so. Periodically killing the Desktop Window Manager process (dwm.exe) from task manager resolves this for me and I no longer have to reboot... sadly I only figured it out recently after having this issue for years.

The graphics freezing sounds like a ram issue on your graphics card, and it's possible it was always there since you bought it. Just that now you're using more and more ram so you're actually hitting it, when you didn't before.

More accounts, more mods, more addons etc

Also the fan on your PC draw air and dust in and after a lot of time it gets caked, and so overheats. I doubt this is the problem but your pc will start running worse over time if it heats up due to this. Gotta buy small and made for pc air blower / compressed air and blow the fans / heat sinks out every 6-12 months.

I only have my personal experience to share. I had 3 instances of XI on and one of XIV, all at max graphics on 24/7. Every week one of the XI instances would get this exact issue and freeze. The game was still playing, I could move the character and do everything except the image was frozen. This went on for almost 2 years I think, it was randomly happening and I just chalked it up to the fact I had tons of tabs open and maybe my PC was just old. I was trying like crazy to fix it but nobody had experience with the issue happening to them. This never happened to XIV, which played fine btw. I don't believe it was a dying GPU, because I factory reset the PC when I upgraded and I gave it to my brother who has 0 issues with it. Doesn't seem dying if it still functions without issues, and it did when I was using it too except this issue randomly happening.

Mine started doing a similar freeze after the 24h2 update for Windows 11. However, it will freeze if I'm tabbed out random;y and snap back after tabbing in.

Tried updating dgvoodoo, but removing it is all that would get it to stop. Nothing else on the PC has issues. I havent had a single issue without dgvoodoo.

quick question

i havent been able to clean my pc yet

but last night i was trying to find the
insteead i found the Microsoft game bar app was open. i never used it before and have no idea what it does. but i closed it and turned it off in settings.
when i woke up this morning there were no crashes.

could the game bar have been the culprit? only asking in case this is happening to someone else and they find this post looking for help. still going to clean my pc when i get the chance - i swear!

do you multibox? or is this happening with a single character?

One character. I have gamebar as disabled as it will let me.

Cross posting here as well.
https://www.ffxiah.com/forum/topic/58258/strange-windower-behaviour/#3734679

Iamarealgirl and Vasch can you doublecheck my post and see if you're experiencing the same thing or if it's different?

I have a feeling that this started happening over the last few months after a Windows 11 patch. I could be wrong but I strongly feel it wasn't happening before.


Also, to this day I'm not experiencing this issue with any other game except FFXI and Diablo 4 (D4 just the first part of my post though, the following ones happen exclusively in FFXI).
Doubt it's a hardware issue either but want to compare our HW just in case?

Using latest nvidia drivers and Windows 11 patches (as of currently writing this post)

For some people the cause could be nvidia's Fast V-Sync setting.
Turning it off solves the issue.
It's an issue that it's not inherently caused by nvidia software alone, the setting that been there for a long time.
But a recent (actually around the end of 2024 summer) Windows 11 patch made that feature behave in a strange way and generate this single frame freeze when alt-tabbing back into games from Windows.

Not sure if this is the source of my problem, but gonna try it when I go back home

https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/games-freeze-on-a-single-frame-after-alt-tabbing-until-i-alt-tab-again.3852164/

My brother had this issue. Updating his BIOS fixed it
Edit: He's got a newer PC with a 4080 series, Windows 11 if that matters at all. It only started when he got his newer computer, never happened on his older one

I've been having this issue on a new PC I just got. It's 100% random and seems to occur for all games lol. Debating just returning CPU to the store.

I see that you are a real girl. I can't say why, but I feel an intrinsic need to carry you through all content and give you gil.

i stopped having (nearly as meany) problems after i uninstalled the microsoft game bar app. i'm still getting a couple of crashes but these are the ones i've always had. pretty sure theyre caused by third party programs other than windower, so i put up with these crashes lol.
but anyways, heres' my info.

alright i was wrong. still happening just not as much. been having the crashes daily as usual. but just had my first freeze and crash in about a week. hp'd from mhaura to ruaun. only happened on 1 of 6 characters.