I decided to come back to the game after some time away, but since I last played I upgraded my system from Windows XP to Windows 7 (Due to all the components not running anymore on XP)
I installed all the files, did my update and was able to load the game and play around a bit (on the retail version) Figuring everything was working I booted up Ashita and after running all the info through the command prompt the game loaded in a off center window, so I closed and altered the size and position values and then loaded again. From then on the game wouldn't load after the command prompt closed, it would just shut the prompt down as if it was loading, but no game would fill the screen.
Unsure if this was a Ashita problem I gave it a go on Windower 4, but the same exact thing happened. One last try, I went back to the original game to see if things would load on my retail version, but now the same thing is happening (I hit "play" PoL disappears, just to return a few seconds later, as if I had logged off the game)
Seeing things worked fine the first time on PoL and Ashita I would guess it's not a hardware problem. No error code or Pop-Up comes up telling me there was a crash and no errant or background programs can be seen running in Task Manager.
I didn't alter any files from the original SquareEnix website install (I had previously loaded a version with the Update Patch and the same thing happened, so I decided to uninstall everything and try a clean attempt this time)