New Gaming Laptop

Hello all,

Does anyone know the easiest way to transfer the game, windower and my settings to a new laptop? Not sure if I have to rebuy the game, transfer versus a thumb drive, etc. thank you for any help that you’re able to give. I’m hopeful it will reduce my lag and make the gameplay a lot better.

For windower: I put my entire Windower/Gearswap on the cloud and just run it from there, so I can use on any pc w/o manually bringing it in.

Not sure about the game I think you can just install it from FFXI site?

I play FFXI on both my desktop and laptop so I could tell ya how I go about transferring my game data between computers. The easiest way would be with a USB flash drive or a portable SSD or HDD would work just as good. For either Windower or Ashita data just straight copy paste your entire folder onto the portable drive and move it over to the new computer. I put the Windower/Ashita folders inside the Square Enix folder, next to where the FFXI and PoL installs are located, but you can have them anywhere on the hard drive and they'll still work.

For the in game macro and config settings, there's 2 ways to transfer that over. Either use the in game backup at the character login screen to save it to the PoL server on the original computer and load it onto the new installation. Or the other option is the FFXI config under Windows has a feature to backup all of your characters config data into one small .xis file. You can just copy that over to the new machine via the flash drive and load the file settings on the new FFXI installation.

For installing the game itself, just download the new client SE posted on their FFXI website since it's from the last year or so and has a MUCH smaller update size and download time after you do the initial game and expansion installs. You only have to buy the game once regardless of how many computers you play FFXI on, since you would just have to recreate your PoL login info from your account on the new machine after running the game installer. Your characters are only tied to your online SE account for the game, they aren't saved onto your computer locally aside from the macros and config data.

After you install the game and do the big first update patch, you should be able to run Windower/Ashita the same way as on your original computer long as you copy the folder that has all the data for them onto the new machine. The only 2 things you might need to change is the game resolution settings in both Windower and the FFXI config file, like say my desktop can run the game in 4K but my laptop can only handle running it in 1080p. The other thing is the shortcut files to launch the game need to match the location of the Windower/Ashita .exe file path, since it might be in a different location on the new computers hard drive.

You can't just straight copy the FFXI or PoL install data because the Windows registry won't recognize it since it was never installed on the new machine. You'll have to just reinstall those with the new client. But Windower & Ashita can be straight copied on a flash drive. I've moved both to my laptop and they worked with no changes aside from the graphic resolution settings for XI. Also if you have any modded/HD DAT files for the game, you can straight copy those into say the XI-Pivot folder located inside the Windower folder on the new computer. The Modded files will still work with a new clean install, you just might need to edit the XI-Pivot settings to point to where the FFXI install location is on the new machine's hard drive.

Yeah I think the config file was also the one for the controller settings. I can’t find it now though. I’ve installed the game into the new laptop but I have to buy an external thumb drive big enough to copy windower and then make sure I can use my controller and hopefully I should be all set.

Yeah I was gonna say the .xis file is the better way to move over the config files since the in game server backup can only move one character at a time. The .xis file moves all your chars data at the same time plus the controller and graphics settings in the FFXI config file from your original computer. If you can create/save a backup .xis file from the computer you first had the game installed on and load that file on the new computer's FFXI config under the Windows start menu, that should automatically load your controller config from the other machine. You can always create a new .xis file if you lost your old one, as long as you still have the game installed on your previous computer that is.

For the flash drive, if you don't have any HD/Modded DAT files for the game then you would only need like a 1 or 2GB size flash drive for Windower or Ashita, they aren't that big without any DAT mod files. If you do have Modded DAT files though you would probably need at least a 8GB, or probably better a 16GB+ size flash drive to fit all those files since they take up a lot of space. Oh also you have to make sure the controller you're using has the right drivers installed on the new computer, otherwise it won't work at all with any PC games.

I don't do this personally, but I know DropBox works well for Windower between different devices. Like the others have stated though, you'll need to reinstall the FFXI client and POL on each device.

I have no idea if Dropbox is free or not, but I use Google Drive. It syncs my lua's as soon as I change them, so I like it.

I can’t get the aspect or the controller to work right. I changed the screen settings resolution in the XI config folder to 2560x1440 (my computers recommended screen resolution) but when I play the game I can’t see the menus anymore and it’s not fitting on the screen centered anymore. Also with the controller I downloaded the drivers and copied the game pad settings from my other computer but the directional buttons and stuff aren’t working. Only the right and left trigger buttons are working.

I put all Windower files in OneDrive so all I need to do is log in to a computer and they are all there, and stays up to date across multiple computers.

On the character select screen, SAVE TO the server all your settings and macros.

As for the game itself, you can download it from here: http://www.playonline.com/ff11us/download/media/install_win.html

You need to download all 5 files and then run the .exe to install.

Once DirectX, PlayOnline and Final Fantasy XI are installed you just need to add your account information and log in, then wait for update to complete.

Is there a max resolution that ffxi will play on?

No, but higher resolutions start to look weird and there is obviously no real support for ultrawide resolutions. Can be fed through UW programs but it doesn't come out looking very good.

The screen size isn’t right for some reason. I tried to insert a picture of how my screen looks but I don’t know how to do it on here lol. The resolution should be the same as my laptop right? Don’t know if it’s because I attempted to make the UI bigger but normally everything is centered.

I'd need to see what you're talking about since that's ambiguous, but make sure your aspect ratio is set correctly and that your windower resolutions are set correctly.

Man, when I got my new gaming laptop, dealing with the screen size and resolution nearly made me throw the *** thing out the window. I ended up running 1504x846 to make it look like I like. It was a struggle and a half. Then I spent a year playing the game until my buddy let me know the game isn't even running on my dedicated GPU.

Yeah I’m pretty much saying the aspect isn’t working or something. I can’t see the bottom of the game where you normally communicate with other people. I can’t even see the side menu.

Sounds like a scaling issue. Make sure your game is running via dGPU (on Win10/11: Settings -> Display -> Graphics -> select or add PlayOnline/FFXI -> change to High Performance), then make sure scaling is enabled in your drivers. Typically something like that happens when you're running at a render resolution higher than your screen/the window and it isn't being scaled back down to your screen/window's resolution.

Once I went to that I could only add an application, would that be polboot?

I also don’t know how to do the drivers scaling enabled.

yes, polboot should be the right one. scaling settings will be found in nvidia control panel -> adjust desktop size and position. If changing to dGPU doesn't fix it by itself some of those settings may need to be changed depending on the model of laptop.

Ok thank you, I got to play with it now because I changed the main scaling to 100% which makes things centered but now all my menu settings are tiny as hell and I can’t really read them lol. My old laptop didn’t do this.

Probably a smaller resolution on the old laptop. Just increase UI scale in Windower's settings and it should make it all bigger for you.

Is that in the config file where I can change the size of the UI or in game? Also I selected the nvidia control panel and hit only use GPU, would I also select aspect ratio and override the scaling mode set by games and programs?

Windower and Ashita both have 3 different settings for the resolution in game. The screen resolution you should set to whatever your monitor's normal res is, like (1920 x 1080) for 1080p, (2560 x 1440) for 1440p, or (3840 x 2160) for 4K. The UI overlay menu's size in game can be changed with either the slider bar in Windower or in Ashita you can input a custom res for it.

For the actual game graphics, in Windower there is a super sampling option that will upscale the graphics to higher res. I prefer Ashita's method where you can input your own custom graphic res. I use 3840 x 2160 for both my screen and graphic res, and 1600 x 900 for my menu res and it looks really good on my monitor. You can basically disregard the resolution setting on the FFXI config file unless you're running the game vanilla without Windower or Ashita. Those 2 programs override the graphical and res settings when you run them.

Also I forgot to ask, but are you using dgVoodoo 2? It helps a lot with many of the issues running FFXI and allows the game to run in a DirectX 11 Wrapper instead of the original DX8 that the game was developed for. I'd highly recommend everyone install it for FFXI especially if you're on a laptop, since it has an option to force your computer to run the game through the more powerful Nvidia/AMD video card instead of the crappy Intel integrated graphics most laptops have. If you want to use Reshade for extra graphical affects then dgVoodoo 2 is required first to allow Reshade to work with FFXI. Here's the download link for it. http://dege.freeweb.hu/dgVoodoo2/dgVoodoo2/

Honestly I'm not sure what you mean unless you're talking like 8K or some crazy res, cause FFXI actually looks awesome at 4K res, especially with Reshade and the HD modded DATs, you can see the sharper texture quality if you have a 4K monitor/TV as well. It looks pretty incredible for being such an old Ps2 era game. Pretty close to like FFX or FFXII HD remaster quality. I do agree that this game definitely won't look great in ultra wide since it was created back when 4:3 was the standard screen size. 16:9 at least looks pretty good with a regular wide screen monitor.

Suggest grabbing the config plugin (from the Windower plugin listing). It automatically fixes a bunch of aspect ratio issues.

Good morning everyone! Ok so I’m windower when it’s set to borderless window, the scaling is too large and I can’t see ***. When I set it to full screen the scaling looks normal again. I think I have to adjust my equip viewer though cause I can’t see it but I believe it’s loaded. Does anyone know what parameters they use with a 2600x1440 resolution?

I think this is where you right click POL.exe and change the DPI settings. I had this issue with my 4k monitor.

You change the DPI settings to either override or not, can't remember which toggle it is, but it wouldn't be hard to check both settings. Generally it would be the opposite of what it is set to.

This is correct you want to have this set


When you dont, your dpi will scale the resolution.
For example if you have it set to 150% and you have your resolution set to 1000x500 in the windower launcher it ends up being 1500x750 and looks gross and fuzzy

Heya I'll give a more detailed explanation of how to fix the UI menu scaling with Windower. So when you first launch the Windower.exe to edit the program's settings, go under the "Profiles" tab and select the profile you're using to run FFXI, either the default one or if you made a custom name for yours. Then you want to click the round edit button at the bottom of that menu. Then under the "Windower" tab, make sure the resolution setting is set to your monitor's screen size.

Then go over to the "Game" tab to the UI Scale slider bar. That is what changes the UI menu size in game when you're using Windower. When you slide the bar to the right it will increase the menu size in game, and to the left will make the menus smaller in game. I have mine set to 2.3 on the slider but that's with 4K resolution. if you're running the game in 1080p or 1440p then you would probably want to set it to around 2.1 or in that ball park. Try testing it out in game and keep modifying it till you get your preferred menu size.

Also Niflheim made a very good point about the DPI scaling for the game in the Windows settings for the pol.exe file. Definitely edit that as well with the settings they showed on the previous post cause that will help with fixing both the Playonline viewer size and in FFXI itself rendering properly to fit your screen.

Thanks everyone, finally got it all set! Hopefully I can test this in former high lag situations and see if this laptop upgrade was worth it lol. In Dyna D when we use to do Zone 3 boss I would have crazy lag and it affected my parses. I was playing on a netbook at the time though so hopefully this new gaming laptop will erase those issues.