FFXI + my PC = random crashes (please help!)Follow

Ok, so I'll start at the beginning...around Oct. 2004 I got a new PC (self built from parts on newegg) my old PC ran FFXI fine, this one runs it much better.

Life was grand until about 3 or 4 weeks ago on a Sat. morning. I picked up my joystick while crafting on my mule and a nice shock of static electricity later, I had fried my motherboard (no joke!) yeah I think something is/wasn't grounded correctly. I had an MSI motherboard (Socket 478 I think) AGP graphics card, the first one was DOA, so I figured I'd try something different for a replacement. I got a Gigabyte one, pretty similiar specs, I had it overnighted from newegg, so I think Tues. I got my system up and running again. The first couple boots were painful, I had to reinstall my sound card drivers entirely, uninstall any software related to my old motherboard, and install the new software for the new one, once I did everything seemed to be running great (ie fast as usual - first boot or two was wicked slow). I also grabbed some windows updates while at it (I have XP-SP2).

Anyways, everything seems ok on the computer that I've used thus far. Except FFXI, which randomly will crash from time to time, sometimes it just goes to windows other times I get a blue/black screen of death, i've sent several error reports to Microsoft. I'd say this typically happens about once every 3rd day, and generally when i've been logged on for 30 min. or less. Because I've been in Jeuno most of the time. Once I was putting a party together and got booted 2x within a few min., but not once while leveling. Only once did it happen while leveling (fighting a gob in Bibiki Bay), I don't really know how to figure out whats causing it or how to fix it. Its not chronic so I can't really test for it, nor is it persistent enough that I feel like starting a new (ie reinstalling FFXI or windows).

So yesterday I found this thread: http://ffxi.allakhazam.com/forum.html?forum=10;mid=1089735902216382834;num=43;page=1

I think cool, I'll have to play around with this. Mainly because I run a 16:10 display (my windows resolution is at 1920x1200), to my suprise I found I can adjust the ratio in FFXI to 16:10 and I run the game at 1600x1024, it looks pretty nice, but I was always bothered that the '3D graphics' were at 1024x1024 so I figured I'd try and manually change the X coords to 1600 to match the background, while I was at it I bumped up the MIPs to 2. I could see a nice improvement at the character selection screen, characters seemed rounder and trees in the background had better detail. Woot! so I select my mule, log into mog house get some money from AH, and went to zone to Bastok Markets....zzzzzzzzz, crash back to windows, hmm, maybe the game doesn't like the re-ratio'd 3D graphics, so I change that back to 1024, I bump the MIPs upto 3. Go in select my mule, bang, crash back to windows. Hmmm ok change MIPs back to 1, try to log in with mule....boom back to windows. I give up, maybe something is wrong with that zone I figure. I log in with my main (settings are back to original now) in Jeuno, I put a party together we go to Bibiki Bay for a couple hrs. no problems whatsoever, party ends, and I go back to jeuno, log go to mule...zzzzzzzzzzz, black screen of death, had to hit reset button on the computer.

When I booted back up I went and got more windows updates (nothing much I grabbed everything I saw some .NET framework, but there was a driver for my Ethernet portion on my new motherboard) logged back into FFXI and finally was able to get my mule to the AH and back to MH.

I tried to get new drivers for my graphics card (chaintech GeForce 6800, 128 MB ram) but the links on their website are dead.

So any ideas what the problems might be?

I guess I'll start with does anyone think the changes in the registry could be related? (IE will it support 16:10 3D graphics at that resolution?) Or the MIPs #?

Any other ideas?

I fear it could be a bad sector of hardware (ie I fried a small portion of the memory with my motherboard or something, so it only crashed when it tried to store/access something there). But since so far its only involved FFXI I'm not sure that's it.

Driver problem? ie need an update or I have something from my old motherboard hanging around causing a conflict (any idea how to figure this out?)

FFXI problem? A file got corrupted somehow - but in that case it would seem to be more symptomatic I think. I don't look forward to taking an hr. or so to reinstall and another 6 or so to download the updates.

Any advice appreciated, thanks!

I don't think its overheating, although one of my fans makes a lot of noise and needs replaced.

(actualy my BIOS can read the temperature, so I know that's fine).

Nope no windower. (never did, doubt I ever will, I have a laptop to browse with while playing)

I'll checkinto that other stuff if the problem persists.

No I've lost connection in 3 zones at least.

I'll try the file check though.