Routers and Black Screens, oh my!Follow

Hello, everyone. I swear that this is not quite a repeat of a similar problem I've been seeing here in the threads, but more of advice on how to address it.

I justbought Final Fantasy XI and was very excited and just about to create my first character when I experienced the exact same problem as the person in this thread did
( ffxi.allakhazam.com/forum.html?forum=25&mid=10854144974621148&num=1 ), except I'm not fortunate enough to already have a created character. I select the character creation screen and get a nice black screen with sound. I'm also able to move some sort of cursor around, as when I do so with the arrow keys the music changes. In short, I can't play my shiny new game at all

I've consulted several FAQs and even followed the suggestion of making sure my DirectX settings had DirectDraw Acceleration and Direct3D and AGP Texture Acceleration turned on. But to not frustrate you any more before I get to my actual question, here are my system specs:

Dell Dimension 4550, running XP Home
Pentium 4 2.4GHz
64MB GeForce4 MX 420
512MB RAM
10GB free out of 50GB (after FFXI install)

The tricky part comes in with the talk of routers. I get my broadband connection through my college's ethernet. I can't just go out and open a router (I'm pretty sure I can't anyway). I find it odd, though, that for several months earlier this year I played Dark Age of Camelot without a single hitch.

Is there a work around I'm missing that might not be the router? If not, how can I work up justification to ask Technology Services if there's a way they can open up a router, assuming they have one (and I'm damn sure they do). Is it such a big deal? Can you tell me of any potential security problems they might have if they open the ports Square Enix suggests?

(And sorry for how long this all is: my knowledge stops with hardware. Networking is lost on me.)

Thank you!

Try bumping the graphics settings to the lowest possible and seeing if you can run the game. If you can, exit and put everything up a notch and try again.

Continue until it fails again and then you will know what your max settings are.

The card you are using isn't the best, and Dell's drivers are shoddy at best.