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Warning in Regards to Final Fantasy XI UninstallFeb 22nd, 2006 at 11:00 AM by Pikko

Pikko can personally attestaru to this problem as Pikko recentaruly messy-wessed her poor husband's computer up this way. Pokko's computer was so ill that it would not start up and it took great effortarus to get it working again! ----- Recently we have discovered that closing the PlayOnline viewer during the version update process will cause FINAL FANTASY XI to not launch. When this occurs, users will have to reinstall FINAL FANTASY XI as stated in the instruction that appears upon attempting to log into FINAL FANTASY XI. However, please be aware of the following upon FINAL FANTASY XI reinstallation. Upon reinstallation, users will be instructed to uninstall existing files. During this process, users will be asked if it is okay to delete the dll files. Please select "No to all" option. If you select "Yes" and delete the files, severe problem can occur to your computer hardware, such as Windows OS not starting. Please be very careful upon reinstall process. In regards to the version update process, we are currently working to implement a PlayOnline version update where users will no longer have to reinstall or uninstall due to the termination of the version update process due to any unforeseen reason. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Tags: FinalFantasyXI, News

Comments

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DLLs And Users

# Feb 23 2006 at 4:40 PM Rating: Default

__DEL__1591838150912

10 posts

Listen up.

As a programmer I can tell you this:
1) DONT HIT A CANCEL BUTTON DURING INSTALL/UPDATE!!!
Bad things can, and DO happen.
2) Never agree on deleting .DLL files.
DLL files are, interesting and all powerful. They do things that make you go: Wha??? (I do this QUITE often)
3) Suck it up. **** happens.

Bad Programming?
Maybe. DLL files have a habit of becoming interlinked with one another in a fashion that when one is deleted, they start to dereference themselves from the system. System DLLs are famous for doing this. Trust me, this is pennies to some of the crap that DLLs can do.

SEs Fault?
No, remember that you were the ones that hit cancel button. I feel for you, only in that you have to do a reinstall. Other then that, you clicked the button, own up to your actions. I have blown out my system doing things like this ALL the time.

Frankly, you just need to accept that it has happened, move your HDD to a different computer and backup everything, and then reinstall. Most likely, you were do for one anyways.

-magickat-

THE HORROR

# Feb 23 2006 at 3:59 PM Rating: Decent

__DEL__1592764476360

Scholar

21 posts

My friend UNFORTUNATELY fell victim to this bug and is pissed. He of course closed FFXI thinking it will just update again. Well it gave him the uninstall popup and he tried to reinstall FFXI which then deleted his windows files. His windows started to go unstable and here's the sequence of his events:

1. During reinstalling, "windows has become unstable...missing files..place cd in cd rom drive."

2. After putting in cd, "Warning cannot read volume drive 00blah blah...cannot read d-drive."

3. Ok, lets try restore, "windows cannot file..."

4. *gulp* *hits reset button*

5. "Windows cannot load, missing file XXXX.dll"

Now he is scrambling to find his product code or another one. He is looking all over the microsoft message boards for an answer. there is hope that microsoft keeps the info since he activated it. So far, thats his only hope.
Or he can buy anopther XP and sue FFXI. That sounds pretty good.

Fix?

# Feb 23 2006 at 3:07 PM Rating: Decent

__DEL__1591825077441

Scholar

90 posts

I got this recently (3 patches ago, I believe). The message said something to the effect that I needed to restart POL because a .dll could not be changed?

If this is the same problem, I found that while trying to restart my computer, it wouldnt disengage POL and the computer refused to restart. I then proceeded to sever the connection with the power outlet and waited the 15 seconds for everything to power down completly on my computer.

After turning the computer -back- on, all was normal and I could play once again. Freaked me out at first, but well...there you have it.

I dont suggest making a habit of doing a hard shutdown on a regular basis, but it solved the problem that one time for me.

SE messes up again, any real surprise -.-;;

# Feb 23 2006 at 4:35 AM Rating: Decent

__DEL__1593967053272

Scholar

723 posts

Forantly I do not mess around with .dlls via uninstalls. It's just to risky, you just don't know what the uninstaller has associated itself with in the operating system. FFXI associating itself with system vital files like that tho, just stupid ><.

However with system vital files "SYSTEM RESTORE" Should fix the problem. I have not suffered this problem (and am on Windows 2000) so do not know what would happen. However I allways try to restrict programs down. Allways confused me WHY FFXI needs admin privileages (Have to use Run AS service alot @.@), no other game I have installed requries them... Why SE, Why would you enforce people to do things that are technically VERY VERY bad >.<.

I got lucky

# Feb 22 2006 at 11:18 PM Rating: Decent

__DEL__1592270007230

18 posts

as BruteF mentioned, I too just used system restore and had everything fine as well. I closed during the problem in the update and when I saw that I couldn't launch FFXI i just checked to see when the last checkpoint which was 2 days prior so I got lucky. In the future, should this happen again, just make sure before the update do a checkpoint in the system restore so you can go back with no problems.

how many times?

# Feb 22 2006 at 9:48 PM Rating: Decent

__DEL__1593363627467

15 posts

For anyone out there who knows a lot about these kind of things, here's a question:
1)Will this happen again on the next patch updates?

2)Is there anything i can do to prevent this?

3)Is it the Patch downlaoding's fault, maybe a glitch/bug?

Much thanks in advance ^-^

RE: how many times?

# Feb 23 2006 at 12:46 PM Rating: Decent

__DEL__1591878471124

3 posts

They said in the warning that the bug was in the update itself. It looks like it freezes when it says something like "Skipped .dat\something", but you can see in the background that the animation is still going. They say to just wait for a bit and it should go on...I was stupid and impatient and just closed it lol.
There's also the reinstall bug, which asks you to delete windows files that you need to have in order to boot up windows. Of course, at first all the directories are \playonline or something, but if you select "Delete All", you will not be able to run windows. You'll need the Windows XP CD-ROM or something, which I don't have.

Pikko's Problem

# Feb 22 2006 at 9:11 PM Rating: Good

__DEL__1593364651585

Scholar

24 posts

NOTE:

For anyone that has this problem which i also ran into simply use SYSTEM RESTORE to the day before the update not only do u not have to reinstall FFXI u don't even have to do the whole update again only the files that were missed ;)

I was back up and running and in game in less then 10 minutes ^-^

Edited, Wed Feb 22 20:12:29 2006

ps2 or PC?

# Feb 22 2006 at 8:05 PM Rating: Decent

__DEL__1591835292205

Scholar

39 posts

Will this only happen to PC? Or will it happen to a PS2, too?

This is teh sux

# Feb 22 2006 at 7:18 PM Rating: Good

__DEL__1591816348925

Sage

789 posts

I ran into this as well, Install messed up on me on the last file at 99% >.<

I went for the easy fix because it was something I wanted to any way, Format c: and start over on a clean slate.

Only prob is I lost a lot of stuff I had not backed up yet, but I should be able to get most of it again.

This happened to me...

# Feb 22 2006 at 7:02 PM Rating: Decent

__DEL__1591818050229

Scholar

159 posts

Pain in the *** for sure.

Every time I would start up my computer I'd get a message saying that I was missing a hal.dll file, so I looked up how to fix it, followed the instructions, but for some reason my computer was telling itself that my hard drive was a disk drive and that windows was never installed on my computer. It was really annoying, I couldn't even format my hard drive it would always give me an error message.

After countless hours of attempting to fix the problem and locate my hard drive to save the information I had on my computer, I finally gave up and did a complete restore deleting all my old data. Fortunately that worked, and I've got everything I needed up and running again. I kinda needed to clean up my computer anyway.

Not everyone is a tech wizzard

# Feb 22 2006 at 5:54 PM Rating: Decent

__DEL__1591820488099

58 posts

Uninstall shouldnt do things like this, but always does. I'm a computer programmer, so I think i know at least a tiny bit about answering questions computer programs ask me during (un)install. But most players are just plain users. You cant expect them to be able to make such vital decisions. You cant blame anyone answering positively to a question asking to delete files if they wanna play their favorite game.
My hart goes out to everyone having to spend countless hours mucking about reinstalling OS and not only FFXI but also the rest of the programs. Your not trained techies, enjoying an entire weekend of hardcord computer surgery.

dll files?

# Feb 22 2006 at 5:42 PM Rating: Decent

__DEL__1591802365406

2 posts

does anyone know which dll files were deleted or how many? If there are only a few of them, then manually replacing them could work... in theory

RE: dll files?

# Feb 22 2006 at 6:09 PM Rating: Good

__DEL__1591827758054

Scholar

427 posts

There were alot of dll files deleted. I've been at this for two nights now and I'm still getting missing .dll errors.

dll files?

# Feb 22 2006 at 5:42 PM Rating: Decent

__DEL__1591802365406

2 posts

does anyone know which dll files were deleted or how many? If there are only a few of them, then manually replacing them could work... in theory

RE: dll files?

# Feb 22 2006 at 7:03 PM Rating: Decent

__DEL__1591818050229

Scholar

159 posts

I wasn't able to manually replace them my hard drive did a David Copperfield act.

eesh

# Feb 22 2006 at 5:28 PM Rating: Decent

__DEL__1593363627467

15 posts

Thats kind of Ironic that you say this. This is exactly what happened to me and i had to perfrom a system recovery.
http://ffxi.allakhazam.com/forum.html?forum=10;mid=1140586225292773763;page=#1140586225292773763
I had put this on there all of maybe a day ago! lol what timing on my part.

GRARG

# Feb 22 2006 at 4:59 PM Rating: Decent

__DEL__1592280770795

Scholar

24 posts

Oh wow. I actually pressed cancel, because I was wary about deleting any files when I was forced to uninstall FFXI.

I could've screwed up my computer...but hey, I still had to end up spending 7 hours reinstalling FFXI, Zilart and CoP! THAT was fun. >_<

PS2 interesting thing

# Feb 22 2006 at 4:42 PM Rating: Decent

__DEL__1592270128611

Scholar

1,505 posts

Something interesting happened after I updated PoL on my PS2. It asked me to shut down, which I did. I turned on the PS2, went to the browser and holy hey my HDD selection/icon is gone. I was like "WTF?" I restarted my PS2 and checked again and luckily it was there... Could it have anything to do with this?

^.^

# Feb 22 2006 at 4:13 PM Rating: Decent

__DEL__1593968019667

20 posts

Yay me
Nothing happened to my comp when i updated FFXI ^.^

Happened to me about 8 months ago

# Feb 22 2006 at 4:05 PM Rating: Decent

__DEL__1592260905747

View User Forum

Scholar

189 posts

This same thing happened to me about 8 months ago. I had to re-install my O/S and of course FFXI and all it's patches. I worry every time I need to update FFXI and have to walk away from the PC. I can't beleave it took them this long to realise there was a problem.

Happened to me

# Feb 22 2006 at 3:55 PM Rating: Decent

__DEL__1591819692151

Scholar

23 posts

This happened to me, but i actually insalled all the ffxi software again before i restarted my computer and got the .dll files missing error. So i formatted my hard drive and reinstalled windows, but couldnt get back on the internet for a couple days until a friend at school told me that Dell computers had a problem where they wouldnt install the drivers, I don't have a dell but i was desperate so i reinstalled the drivers and it finally worked.
(Which I think putting the drivers on the internet when you cant get online without them is a pretty dumb idea for people that dont have other computers or who made driver discs)

Then came reinstalling FFXI and the super long update ._.

can't load windows XP

# Feb 22 2006 at 3:49 PM Rating: Decent

__DEL__1591878471124

3 posts

This happened to me too... Do I need the Windows XP boot up cd-rom to get into windows? And would I lose everything on the comp? And would that cd-rom be the only thing I need? I can't load windows... the computer is useless atm. >.<

RE: can't load windows XP

# Feb 22 2006 at 4:17 PM Rating: Excellent

__DEL__1591827758054

Scholar

427 posts

You need your windows CD to get back up and running. You may also need a PS2 keyboard in order to press delete during your BIOS check so you can change the boot order so it will boot off the CD.

Once into your windows CD go into setup and then hit repair. It should (note I said should) reload windows. You will still have to reinstall most of your drivers for things like printers, USB cameras, game pads, etc. I also had to reinstall microsoft's .net drivers, and a few other things.

I'm still getting an error that says that a certain system event failed to start properly but I haven't had time to track it down.

BTW, FFXI took 5 1/2 hours to d/l and install the updates. I'd suggest renting all of the Lord of the Rings movies or both Star Wars trilogies while you wait.

ohh

# Feb 22 2006 at 3:35 PM Rating: Decent

__DEL__1591807114922

Scholar

590 posts

Whoa, when I installed it keeped crashing whenever aim popped up or another window. Eventually I was able to not do anything else with my computer and just let it install, lucky me I guess. ^^

...

# Feb 22 2006 at 3:31 PM Rating: Decent

__DEL__1592764092567

Scholar

251 posts

Yeah this happened to me also. I just said F it and reinstalled windows and such. But it sucked because I had lent my disks out so I couldn't reinstall for a day and a 1/2. :(

Holy Microsoft Syndrome Batman

# Feb 22 2006 at 3:28 PM Rating: Good

__DEL__1591827758054

Scholar

427 posts

This happened to me. Since I don't have time this week to reload windows and all my software on to my PC and my kids needed it for homework, it cost me $100 to have someone recover my windows install and have them load all my crap back on.

I've never seen software written this poorly in my life. I was a windows support tech for 3 years and if one of my users told me about this happening I wouldn't have believed them.

Way to go SE!

THX SE!

# Feb 22 2006 at 3:22 PM Rating: Decent

__DEL__1592344214007

16 posts

yeah...i noticed that they added their tidbit to the update screen while i was on PS2 waiting for my hd to reformat, but a true thx to Rajin for suggesting my Raid format a few years ago :)

It took them this long . . .

# Feb 22 2006 at 3:21 PM Rating: Decent

__DEL__1592763430502

Scholar

470 posts

They are just now realizing this? I had this happen on a brand new machine when I first installed FFXI back when I first bought the game in Aug 04.

This is horrid programming. Unistall programs should remove the changes to pre-existing files rather than simply delete them.

Sloppy sloppy sloppy.

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