Possible Blackscreen Fix When Using Config Plugin

If you're having trouble with the patcher or don't trust it, you can also use this guide(though you need visual studio and editbin), just replace python with pol:
https://gisgeek.blogspot.com/2012/01/set-32bit-executable-largeaddressaware.html

Other things to check:
-Make sure POL and FFXI aren't running, you can't edit the file while it's in use.
-Make sure you run as admin(pol.exe is likely in program files and newer windows are super picky about anything in there).
-Not sure what in there would trigger virus detection, windows defender didn't give me any trouble, but if your virus software doesn't like it then whitelist it.

If a ffxi update replaces pol.exe or an ashita/windower/server update replaces your bootloader, you'll have to patch it again.

Chiming in to say no black screens since I started using the patcher last month. Everyone get in here!

That was missing in my life, thanks Thorny!

with the patcher does it cap to 4gb instead of 2gb and can it increase further than 4gb?

The patcher changes the cap to 4GB, and no you cannot increase it any further. 32 bit software uses 4 bytes for memory addressing.
Because a signed value can be negative or positive, signed 4 byte values represent a range from -2147483648 to 2147483647. Thus, by default, a 32 bit application will limit the application to 2GB so that all values can be represented by a 4 byte signed value.

The /LARGEADDRESSAWARE flag is basically a way of saying 'this application does not use signed values to store pointers'. A 4 byte unsigned value does not need to represent negatives, so it can represent values from 0 to 4294967295. As a result, when you set the flag, a 32 bit application is allowed to address 4GB.

Maybe this is unnecessary background, but the tldr; is that you cannot increase it further than 4GB in any way without having it built for an entirely different architecture.

Has anyone noticed this fixing random crashes that happen in certain areas with glow effects and some mods? Such as zoning into heavens tower sometimes for example with certain mods.

Possibly an overstatment - but please take my body Thorny!

Thanks for the fix. This problem had persisted for me even with no dat mods and I had only narrowed it down to a native windower mod. So far so good with the fix in place.

Another +1 for Thorny's fix.

I had the zones fail to load in every few hours per character (triple-boxing on 1 pc, restarting POL would temporarily fix it for another few hours). Used the patcher a little over a week ago and have not had a single instance of zones failing to load even after leaving characters logged in for days. This is also with the HD zone dats. At least for me, it's been completely resolved with this.

You are a hero!

This is kinda late but question, do we need to rerun the LAA patcher after every update? I'm assuming that if pol.exe gets replaced it'll need to be repatched again.

correct, you will need to run it anytime pol.exe gets replaced (not positive if that is every update or not, i don't pay that much attention)

Is this doing same thing as using NTCore patch?

https://ntcore.com/?page_id=371

Yes, it's just setting a flag in the executable header called LargeAddressAware (LAA).

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/build/reference/largeaddressaware-handle-large-addresses?view=msvc-170

https://codekabinett.com/rdumps.php?Lang=2&targetDoc=largeaddressaware-msaccess-exe

Regarding the original topic of loading into a black zone, another possible cause of this is if the disk "hiccups" for whatever reason the moment that FFXI tries to load the zone dat into memory. This happens more on mechanical drives and on system with low RAM/VRAM as the system is forced to page memory to disk, or if there's heavy disk usage in the background (disk indexing, torrent seeding), or if there's too many processes that access disk at the same time, etc etc etc. If such an hiccup happens, FFXI will just fail to load the DAT and zone you into a black zone (or sometimes blue, if the skybox loads and the rest of the zone doesn't). With SSDs this cause happens significantly less, but they're still not immune from it.

Older thread but running into this issue, the links all old/not working

i updated the links in my own post when i moved it, obviously the OP didn't though

Until yesterday, I had not encountered this issue in the few years I've played on this computer (using updated pol.exe via Thorny's patch.) I've now had it twice on different accounts. 2 things changed which exposed me to it:
1 -- I started using HD textures recently though I hadn't noticed any issue by themselves until...
2 -- I got the first mule for 5 accounts yesterday and started moving a lot of gear around.

On the 2 accounts I have tidied up so far, they have both black-zoned and crashed after I'd spent a while logging back and forth to d-box gear to the new mule. After the 2nd time it happened, I began watching memory usage and noticed that FFXI does not free memory when logging out (at least, not when using /logout command from Mog House) so the usage climbs on each login. Spend a couple hours doing this and it's enough to cause a crash even on a patched executable.

Bottom line: Relaunch FFXI after any prolonged muling session - particularly if you use HD textures.

Do you use findall addon?

I have never had this issue before but a few weeks ago I had it happen twice in a row and only on the account with the most characters, the only new thing was findall addon.

FWIW, I can reproduce a notable increase in RAM usage on my normal loadout in Ashita, which has a completely different FindAll with no shared code. Might be the client itself.

I do, yes. These 5 accounts have 2 chars each, though -- 1 alt and 1 new mule. My main account has 6 mules but hasn't black-zoned ever(yet) likely because I sorted them out long ago before I started using HD textures and haven't spent any length of time doing the mule-shuffle with them.

It's certainly possible that another add-on is to blame, though, so for completeness' sake, I use:
BattleMod, Cancel, Debuffed, DistancePlus, enternity, Equipviewer, findAll, GearSwap, MountRoulette, PetTP, Send, Shortcuts, STNA, temps, XIPivot, SkillChains, superwarp, and SendAllTarget.

I tested this by not using windower at all and the ram usage increases too. I rotated 10 characters and every time I got back to the start the ram use was higher than when I started, and you can keep doing it. It's not a massive increase, but if you keep doing it then it adds up over time.

XI can only use 1 gig of ram max (it does not matter how much ram you have on the pc, the game is only allowed to use 1 gig per account), so if you have a small mem leak when you log out and back in it's going to eventually get to a point where it does not have enough ram to load a big zone and forces you to close the game. On vanilla this takes months cause you're using so little ram to begin with, so monthly maint means you prob never see the issue.

So yeah as you said said, if you have a lot of mules you cycle daily and you use HD mods / lots of addons you need to restart every week (maybe every 3 days) to stop the mem leak getting to a critical point and causing a zone blackout.

If you use the 2 gig patch Thorny made, it will still happen but it takes a lot longer to hit that max allowed ram use. So maybe you can last 2-3 weeks before needing to restart (if at all b4 maint hits).

This also seems to be related to the chat log issue where expanding chat wipes everything, you'll also notice if you have a lot of accounts that this mainly happens on the account with the most active alts you cycle though daily too (you're too close to the max ram limit and it prob can't load the battle log into ram when you expand).

Good info, glad someone did this test.


XI can use 2 gigs, the patch allows 4(roughly, it's actually INT32_MAX and UINT32_MAX bytes). The issue is that due to fragmentation you often won't have enough contiguous RAM remaining to store an entire zone texture far below 2(4) gigs.

Oh hey looks like ffxi does not deallocate memory properly on logout

It's not exactly hard testing or scientific, but FWIW I've never once experienced this black screen thing in several years of continuous play, though the majority of people I play with see it from time-to-time and one friend notoriously got this error at least once/day for months.

I don't say this to try to cast aspersions on the testing of Vanilla FFXI, but rather to point out that whatever problem exists within the original code is (probably) made dramatically worse by some dat swap, addon, plugin, or other code.

If you ever find a solution for it, I've got several friends who would love to hear more about it.

edit to add: also I haven't done Thorny's fix of editing the exe or whatever it is & the friends experiencing this problem tried literally everything they could find.

That's kind of inherent to the problem, though. The more things allocating ram, the more fragmented it will become (and the less free space will exist in general). This shouldn't be a major problem for vanilla players in general, so that result is expected.

The problem itself can be simplified to failing to load zone dat, which means a bad HD read or insufficient contiguous RAM to store it in. The reason people experience it disproportionately could very well be memory leaks in commonly used tools.

This seems like a pretty straight forward bug report that should be submitted on the official forums. the reproduction is very simple I don't suspect they will have a hard time reproducing it and is might even be a trivial change to free the memory properly.

When I log in with my mods and stuff, I'm using around 350-410 megs. When it black zones, its built up to around 1.3 - 1.4 gig (for that one instance)

since new update i am now getting black screen every time i enter Reisenjima i do use Xipivot windower 4 plus nextgames HD dats along with FFXI-HD, never had this happen in the last 4yrs using it but since new big update i am unable to enter Reisenjima with out it black screening me. any updates on what may be causing this? as i have tried to roll back the dats to original files with no effect, ran file check (which it found x15 corrupt files/fixed them) then problem still happens

also happening in Escha Ruan now ... uninstalled reshader v6.4.1 & black screen issue go away, not added any HD dat files back so for now it seems like reshader might be my cause for black screen issues

edit: ok started again this morning,, confirmed reshader v6.4 is the cause, HD dats added back all looking good.. only missing the menu font & log in title screen bits but i can live with that