FFXI - can't start for some reason?Follow

System: Athlon 2200+, 1.25GB RAM, Win2k w/SP4, DX 9.0b.
Video: NVidia GF6600, 256MB RAM.

Here's the situation:

Due to a botched FreeBSD install (ah, the joy of trying to boot off a 250GB drive on a system dating back to '99), I had to reinstall Win2k to try and fix the install that already existed (for whatever reason, I couldn't get the damn thing to fix the MBR from the Recovery Console).

I've managed to get everything reasonably close to how it was before the reinstall, with one problem:

Whenever I try to start FFXI, it'll go to the black screen (so it's switching modes properly), then occasionally go to a white screen, and then everything POL-related just quits, and I'm back to Windows.

I'm kinda getting frustrated, as it's getting on time to feed my saplings another crystal...

Did so; no change.

Edit: No missing files; however, for some reason the NVidia page (under the Display control panel) is showing the video card's connection as being PCI 0x... and I happen to know it's AGP (I believe 8x).

Any idea how to fix THIS?

Edited, Mon Apr 10 03:13:42 2006 by MDenham

Edit #2: You know, it helps if I dig up, from the old install of Win2k, the CPU-AGP bridge drivers. Installed those; going to reboot shortly. Maybe THAT will fix things.

Edited, Mon Apr 10 03:35:31 2006 by MDenham

Edit #3: Grrr. HULK SMASH. ::breaks Windows into tiny shards of Glass::

Still no luck here. At least I can check on things tomorrow from Barnes & Noble.

Edited, Mon Apr 10 04:35:08 2006 by MDenham

I'm not too much of a fan of WinXP, actually - it's on my laptop, and if it weren't for the fact that I'd have to wipe it to install Win2k on it, I'd put Win2k on it, too.

My main reason for sticking with Win2k is that it's got somewhat lower overhead than WinXP does, and doesn't really have any issues with older games like WinXP does (I have a decent number of DOS-era games, which run fine under Win2k outside of not having sound - and I've heard that these types of games are an absolute ***** to get running at all under WinXP).

Oh well... it's probably the drivers to something besides my sound and video that's ******** with it. :-)

Well, I have NO idea what the hell is going wrong.

So... reinstall all of POL+FFXI FTW. :-/

Not looking forward to it, as the updates will take for-freakin'-ever on this connection, but it looks like that might be the only solution I've got.

same vid card as you, see... this is the solution i was not looking forward too. damn. i will still run Driver cleaner first just in case.

what drivers are you using that "work"?