Intermittent Outdoor Black Screen On Zone

Sometimes I'll get a black screen (no landscape/background appear, only other characters, monsters, npcs, mounts, the home point, and other things that can be interacted with show up) whenever I warp/hp to an outdoor (non-dungeon) area. I can take the homepoint back to town (sometimes town is black screened, sometimes not), but returning to the outdoor area (even via Nexus cape) brings back the black screen.

At first, I thought this was a dual box issue, so I shut down my 2nd account... but the problem persisted even with a single instance running.

Also, I'm not the only one experiencing this problem. I was advised to shutdown and restart POL when I mentioned what happened in /ls by a mate that also runs into this, and I've heard a couple more mention thinking about switching to Ashita because of it.

Edit to add: Windows 10 w/ dual monitors. I keep Google Chrome and Discord up in the second monitor

Edit Two: Black screens also occur when simply zoning from the neighboring area. It is not limited to "warps".

idk what those are, but all I'm using with Windower are add-ons & plug-ins that shipped with the package (none by an Amelilas).

Edit: Googled it... no, I'm not using any 3rd party graphics overhaul - or for clarification, I'm not using any other third party products except for Windower & its officially supported add-ons/plug-ins.

I've had this happen to me but not in awhile. Use to happen occasionally. Didn't use any mods or anything like that myself. Never figured out why it was happening but luckily for me it stopped and haven't happened since.

I know others it has happened to aswell so it's not just you but unfortunately i can't help fix the issue. All i know is when it happens you have to completely reboot the game.

I've had this happen twice with Windows 10, separate characters. I can't point to a cause with certainty, but I suspect it's an OS memory issue. In both cases it happened after about a week's worth of playtime and heavy browser use, with a few addons showing memory errors the second time.

I started rebooting every other day or so and haven't had it occur again since.

It happens to me whenever I zone out from either Reisenjima or Dynamis Divergence areas after being in those zones for a period of time.

Thanks for the opinion. I'm running one char on Windower & one on Ashita. If it never happens on Ashita, I don't think it's an OS/memory issue.

We'll see.

This glitch has nothing to do with using the browser or needing to restart the pc.

I restarted my PC today, didn't use any browser at all, and after 3 hours of playing, I got black screened again. =/

Had a similar issue. I unloaded guildworks and it resolved it for me. Do you have guildworks plugin loaded?

Nope, but I'm thinking that the problem might be resolved. I unloaded the in-game minimap plugin and it hasn't happened in the few hours I was able to play it whereas it was happening frequently before I did that.

Update Edit: The minimap seems to have been the culprit. I can live without it.

Update Edit Redux: Spoke too soon... just got another black screen. *sob*

Continuing to have problems with this, so I uninstalled FFXI, redownloaded & installed a fresh copy.

Spent hours playing on just the base game (no Windower). Never got a black screen or had the game crash.

In less than an hour of logging out and firing up Windower, it crashed & black screened.

Thought it might be Win 10's shitty UAC, so I made myself the owner of the hard drive & enabled write permissions, but that didn't fix the problem, either.

had this happens once a few months back. when zoning into DynaD bastok.
Had to relog to be able to move at all.

was tripleboxing at the time

Got it narrowed down to 1 (or more) of the following add-ons via disabling add-ons by batches:

Silence
Target Info
TH Tracker
Treasure Pool

I've been playing without any issues whatsoever (aside from the occasional random lua error, but whatevs) for the past 48 hours. No crashes, no black screen, nothing.

Edit: Crashes are back, they occur any time I'm in a busy zone with lots of animations. It's a windower issue, because vanilla XI doesn't crash in identical circumstances, then I log into Windower and it crashes almost immediately.

Starting to think Windower doesn't play nice with multi-monitor setups.

Wyldfyre may i ask what GPU do you run in your pc?

I have the exact situation, and I also run multi-monitor setup.

It doenst happen at all with the same windower/same plugins on my laptop.

I run SLI RTX 2080's. I dont know if the RTX has anything to do with it. but I get the blackscreen most frequently after reisenjima, dynamis, or leaving escha.

I fixed my issue after disabling FindAll and TreasurePool. So if you load them make sure you unload them before zoning into new area.

I'm stuck with this problem at the moment and having trouble solving. Fresh Windows 10 install, ffxi installed from SE website, basic W4, still happens daily. Multiboxing 3 chars.

Anyone have any luck figuring out a fix? PC is strong, Nvidia gpu, and no issues with other games. Seems to have started only in the last 2 months since installing the SE website version (was using the steam version prior). But that can't possibly be the root cause.

HQ DAT Mods usually creates this issue.. If you updated any DATs your HQ DATs for graphic upgrades, sometimes the DAT doesn't load or uncompress on time causing black zone... Try going back to vanilla DATs..

Sadly no dat mods. Vanilla W4 with only approved addons. Its infuriating!

I would disable 1-2 addons every few days and see if you can link it to any of those. Just cause an addon is approved doesn't mean it can't break with an update or something.

Could be your hdd ?

It would help to narrow it down as I don't know the source at the moment.
- GTX 1080ti, up to date drivers
- Windows 10 64bit current build fresh install
- FFXI new installer
- Windower 4, lots of addons but all official
- HDD is is a 1yr old Samsung 500gb SSD. I had the last install on a second SSD but moved it to C:drive in case that was effecting it. Still happens.

Next steps:
- remove all windower addons, use true vanilla windower and see if it still happens
- try without windower
- reinstall using Steam version (I used this in the past, no issues like this. I only started getting black environment issues when I reinstalled to non-steam stand-alone installer... but it would be weird if this fixed it since so many use the SE official installer)

I'll bump later with results. Would be good to figure it out and document it here. If any other ideas, let me know. Thanks!

Sounds like it could be one of the add-ons. Good luck, maybe trying turning them on one by one

I had the same issue for years was using vanilla W4. Would also crash once per dynamis D runs. When I installed dg Voodoo all my problems disappeared.

ftfy

I have this issue too. Single monitor setup. GTX 1080. No dat mods. I only have those crashes when a lot is happening in something like dynamis D. Its also almost 100% crash when alliance get hit by firaga. Havent tried dgVoodoo.

EDIT: Not using Guildwork plugin.