Help a girl out! I got a virus ;_;Follow

This may sound a bit extreme, but it should work.

I had the same issue and was only able to correct it by reformating my HD.

Since the laptop is only a month old, hopefully you do not have too much data stored on the HD.

I bought a zip drive and backed up all my data files and music files. I left the anime video files because they were the source of some the viruses and worms I had on my PC.

After I pulled the data and music files off, I reformated my HD and reloaded all the software, including POL and FFXI. If you bought your laptop from a legit place, you should have an OS boot disk and application disks along will all the other junk you get.

Besure to include a Anti-virus application and do not connect to the net until AFTER you have installed and have anti-virus running.

I am not a IT person, or real smart when it comes to PC's, but this was the only method that worked for me. I am sure they're much smarter people on this forum when it comes to PC repairs, but this is what worked for me.

Just passing on my experience.

As long as we've got a tech support thread on the main forum, let me copy and paste my similar problem.


Any time I'm outside of my Mog House on any of my characters, the game crashes and I get a Windows error saying Playonline Viewer encountered an error and needed to shut down.

If I log on and I'm not in my Mog House, I last about 3-5 seconds before this error kicks me off. If I log onto one of my mules I can stay in the Mog House with no problems indeffinetly. I tried taking one of my mules outside and the same error poped up and kicked me.

Can anyone help me fix this problem?

ok, i remember having a similar problem once upon a time when i first tried installing ffxi on my laptop, turned out i had the graphics set too high, so probably the first thing to do is go check your graphics settings and set them to ablsolute minimum. 640x480 should be fine for both foreground and background for now, if that works then gradually turn them up till you get to the resolution you want or untill the game runs too slowly/ crashes again and set it below that point. Also make sure bump mapping and weather effects are turned off.
As for your situation with ffxi not recognizing its data, check under add/remove programs to see if it has reapeared since the system restore, if it has uninstall it then reinstall ffxi, if it isnt there then just reinstall ffxi.

if the above doesnt fix it i recomend calling tech support, you can work with the basic helpers most likely but if what they suggest doesnt work or they give you attitude, ask for a senior tech, they are the ones that actually know what they are doing, the basic helpers just have a troubleshooting sheet to go over but dont know the inner workings of the game. also, if one of the basic helpers tells you to disable your antivirus, immidiately ask for a senior tech, disabling antivirus in in no way necissary to fix any problem in the game and at this point the probem is beyond what the basics can help you with.

Regaurding the argument between IE and Firefox, Firefox is the beter choice without a doubt, however that doesnt mean you should remove IE altogether, IE is reqired for Windows updates, if you dont have it you cant download the service packs among other things. Windows updates however is the only thing IE should be used for, Use Firefox for everything else. IE is garbage and even with the latest security patches can and will let spyware, adware, & viruses into your system, i know this from personal experience so i dont want to see any counter posts from people who havent actually tried this and dont know any better. Im not going to say that firefox is the only browser out there, there are others (ex. Opera), but Firefox is the best, it is updated more frequently, is open source, and best of all is free. In the end the choice is yours as to what browser you use, all i can do is warn you of the dangers and make my best recomendation.

As for the antivirus issue, avg is fine. True it isnt the best, there are better choices such as norton or zone alarm (my personal choice) but avg does work and will protect you sufficiently for what you appear to do.

The last thing i want to address is the comment made by someone that viruses/spyware/adware and the like cant get into your system as long as you are careful about what you download. In short, this is wrong... these things can enter your system just by visiting a website, you dont have to click anything or download anything the site will just load it on your system. This is one of the reasons i recomendd firefox, a great deal of these malcodes are targeted towards coding flaws in IE, not all of them are targeted at IE but most are. Firefox is built by a community of programers and as such these issues get adderssed much sooner than with other browsers, even Opera is better than IE at doing this. In any case, the point is spyware/adware/viruses can get on your system no matter what you do, all you can do is try to protect youself as best you can by getting browsers that attempt to block incusions and antivirus that can handle what does get through.

I hope this is helpfull to you and that you may rejoin us in ffxi soon, goodbye and good luck!

System restore has never worked sadly. It's the biggest cockup microsoft has produced. It hides a copy of all viruses (if you have any disable system restore before running and cleaning) to reinstate them at a later date, it leaves your registry bugged and bloated and rarely offers long term stability.

If you havent disabled system restore already then do so and run another scan (preferably with a more reputable AV engine like Symantec). http://security.symantec.com free online scanner.

It sounds to me that you did not uninstall FFXI, you just deleated the Folder. So your laptop still recoginzed FFXI as an installed program. I would do as a previous poster sugested and remove Playonline's registry entries. If you did infact just deleate the folder that is a problem. If you have a friend with FFXI installed copy their FFXI folder to DVD or CDor zip, and then just place it into where you had the playonline and FFXI folders installed.

That should fix the problem, if you did deleate the folder. Your computer still mght have the virus also, even though you did a system restore.

A free online virus scanner is TrendMicros house call, i believe its called, now it is not the best but it is verry good. Also with Spybot S&D, there is an imbededprogram called Tea Time, it will notify you when a program is trying to change the registry. It allows you to block or allow registry changes. This can be very helpfull because most spywhere and virus make reqistry entries, to keeptrack of files that it needs to operate. Some stuff just makes Api calls, API calles are normal, they are commands.

Thanks for the help Pigkiller. I reinstalled FFXI and everything seems to be working fine now. Yeah the updates where annoying, but not as annoying as not being able to play ^^

I use just IE daily, many times daily. My number of virus = 0, number of spyware = 0, adware = 0, so from personal experience, IE is as solid as a rock, a large rock. I run no spyware blocking programmes either, just a firewall on my router and my PC and norton av professional, thats it.

I also use Firefox on Suse X86_64, but if I were to check that one, I'm pretty sure I'd find no spyware on that, but thats only because I havent stuck it on the net yet (cant find 64bit drivers).

However, from your post, it seems apparent you like to travel sites where you can get spyware/adware/virus infections, so really you should modify your browsing habits, a poor workman blames his tools.

On topic. Ya, your buggered really, grab your disc that came with your box, wipe everything off your hard drive, reinstall Windows. Before you connect to the internet (important that bit) slap on a firewall and anti virus software, then connect to windowsupdate.microsoft.com and get all your updates, then the latest drivers for your hardware.

Though its probably much easier to find someone who knows what they are doing. And ya, turn system restore off, waste of space ;)

I'm not so sure but some anti-virus softwares will identify Pol.exe and some other FFXI files as virus/trojans. Chances are AVG deleted one of the Pol files.

Here is what I'd do:
1. Try to uninstall FFXI and POL (a clean uninstall would be best).
2. Reinstall POL then run it before installing FFXI (less updates).
2a. If it goes well install FFXI and try to play.
2b. If it does not then POL has a problem.
3. If you can't play then you can try to boot to Safe Mode and do a system restore (it should remove your installation) and try to run on the old files again.
4. If you can't play cause a file is missing then your best bet will be contacting POL support and tell them your problem. However, I think their respond would be format your hardrive and reinstall Windows and everything.

Norton Ghost > System Restore. No messy registry, no bugs, no problems, takes all of 3 minutes (from a non working system to be 100% up and running) and can also work independent of windows (thats a big bonus right there).

Most mainboard CDs come with a copy of ghost 2003 (floppy version) or find a friend who does. Believe me its worth it.

Edited, Sat Oct 15 19:52:27 2005 by Reaperttk