Yarlen Yarlen

Black Screen Workaround

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Black Screen Workaround

from Sins Forums

(Updated - 4/23/12)

Thank to everyone's submissions we've been able to track this issue down for the vast majority of users. 

We've determined that this bug appears to be caused by older Nvidia drivers. If those having this issue can try updating their drivers directly from the Nvidia website for their chipset, that would be great. You must be using driver version 296.10 or higher.

The URL is: http://www.geforce.com/Drivers

Once your drivers are updated if you still hit the black screen crash on startup, please try setting your Nvidia driver as the preferred 3D device as shown here: http://screencast.com/t/RTo1NZaVM

If you could let us know if this works for you, that would be great.

Thank you in advance.

 

 

78,938 views 88 replies
Reply #26 from Sins Forums Top

Okay, we think we're making progress on this issue. According to the vast majority of dxdiag data that's been submitted to us, this is largely an issue with laptops that have both Intel Integrated Graphics and a secondary video chipset (typically an Nvidia mobile series 4200M, 540M, 555M or 560M). 

If you're having the black screen problem and the above describes you, can you tell us if you hookup your system to one or more monitors?  Do you keep both video chipsets enabled?  If you disable the Intel graphics chipset in your BIOS, does that help?

Thanks in advance!

Reply #27 from Sins Forums Top

Never have dealt with a second monitor, still have had the problem...and for what it's worth, my graphics card is ATI, not Nvidia (do have a laptop though)...

 

Multiplicity - Control multiple PCs using one keyboard and mouse
Reply #28 from Sins Forums Top

^ System Specs?

Reply #29 from Sins Forums Top

Ok, had this problem occur today after I'd updated Sins Reb. Previously had the same with Entr and Diplo when attempting to play on 1920x1080 resolution, which Sins (up to Diplomacy) still won't(Reb runs in full HD fine). Only run it on laptop screen, no monitor.

Updated graphics drivers, no joy, changed settings file to run at 800x600, no joy. Set to run from window, no joy. Delete local content, no joy.

Set GPU to run game in NVidia control panel 'preferred graphics processor - High-Performance NVidia Processor' and left all other settings as default, IE allow application to decide (think this effectively disables integrated chipset, but didn't get as far as changing BIOS settings).

 

Reb now runs fine. Have run SDSupport Tool & emailed. Hope this helps, bit of a pain but I've sorted the black screen whenever it's happened.

 

CPU: i7-2630 QM
GPU: NVidia GeForce GT 555M - NVidia driver vers 296.10
RAM: 16GB
OS: Windows 7 64-bit

 

Edit: Rebellion now runs fine in full HD

Reply #30 from Sins Forums Top

Just for clarification, you are now able to run it at 1920x1080 resolution on your laptop by following this procedure?

Reply #31 from Sins Forums Top

I just got a black screen crash when starting up.  It seems Steam was updating the game but the game continued to run anyways.

Reply #32 from Sins Forums Top

I have just experienced this issue. And must say it is extremely annoying. I have emailed this info thru the proper channels and I am eagerly awaiting a fix for this. Any help is much appreciated.

Reply #33 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting NeoCortex75, reply 32
I have just experienced this issue. And must say it is extremely annoying. I have emailed this info thru the proper channels and I am eagerly awaiting a fix for this. Any help is much appreciated.
End of NeoCortex75's quote

 

Have you tried this fix listed above?

https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/420308/page/2/#3117786

 

Reply #34 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting boshimi336, reply 30
Just for clarification, you are now able to run it at 1920x1080 resolution on your laptop by following this procedure?
End of boshimi336's quote

Sorry Boshimi, yes Reb runs at full HD on my laptop, have edited post to reflect this. Actually thought it was running at a lower resolution like I have to run the Trinity games but it defaulted to 1920x1080.

Reply #35 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Yarlen, reply 26
Okay, we think we're making progress on this issue. According to the vast majority of dxdiag data that's been submitted to us, this is largely an issue with laptops that have both Intel Integrated Graphics and a secondary video chipset (typically an Nvidia mobile series 4200M, 540M, 555M or 560M). 

If you're having the black screen problem and the above describes you, can you tell us if you hookup your system to one or more monitors?  Do you keep both video chipsets enabled?  If you disable the Intel graphics chipset in your BIOS, does that help?

Thanks in advance!
End of Yarlen's quote


I have what you explained, but an NVidia mobile 525M card. I tried disabling the intel chipset, but i couldn't get any higher resolution than 1280x800 when my native now is 1920x1080. I instead disabled the NVidia card and nothing screwy happened like when i disabled the Intel chip. I could then start up Rebellion, but it was set in 1920x1080 by default and i couldn't see anything until i went to the settings, set it to windowed mode so i could get to the options, and then i chose the next lowest option (1600x900 i think) and it works fine in full screen now.


Quoting rossp, reply 29
Ok, had this problem occur today after I'd updated Sins Reb. Previously had the same with Entr and Diplo when attempting to play on 1920x1080 resolution, which Sins (up to Diplomacy) still won't(Reb runs in full HD fine). Only run it on laptop screen, no monitor.

Updated graphics drivers, no joy, changed settings file to run at 800x600, no joy. Set to run from window, no joy. Delete local content, no joy.

Set GPU to run game in NVidia control panel 'preferred graphics processor - High-Performance NVidia Processor' and left all other settings as default, IE allow application to decide (think this effectively disables integrated chipset, but didn't get as far as changing BIOS settings).

 

Reb now runs fine. Have run SDSupport Tool & emailed. Hope this helps, bit of a pain but I've sorted the black screen whenever it's happened.

 

CPU: i7-2630 QM
GPU: NVidia GeForce GT 555M - NVidia driver vers 296.10
RAM: 16GB
OS: Windows 7 64-bit

 

Edit: Rebellion now runs fine in full HD
End of rossp's quote


Any chance you could tell me how you did that? I tried going into the NVidia control panel but the only thing i could change was 3d options, and i updated my drivers and everything. My only option to fix my problem was to just disable the NVidia card, probably not the greatest choice but the only one i could take.

Reply #36 from Sins Forums Top

After the latest update and reset I now get this bug and cannot play the game, I sent in two mini dump files.

http://sd.stardock.com/SDSupportTool.exe is also not working for me...

Edit: Done I got it to work so sent it off.

Final update, the game seems to be working as normal, even though I had not fixed anything... either way I hope the files I sent will still be useful.

Reply #37 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting rossp, reply 34

Any chance you could tell me how you did that? I tried going into the NVidia control panel but the only thing i could change was 3d options, and i updated my drivers and everything. My only option to fix my problem was to just disable the NVidia card, probably not the greatest choice but the only one i could take.
End of rossp's quote

 

Go to 3D Settings on the left hand pane, then in the right (where it says Manage 3D Settings) hit the Global Settings tab, then the drop-down under that should give you the option of your preferred graphics processor. I just selected the NVidia card, and presume that forces the GPU to be used and effectively disables the Intel chipset. If I'm wrong, apologies, but that's what worked for me.

Reply #38 from Sins Forums Top

I tried the suggested methods of recovery and finally succeeded with my reinstall. Thanks for all the help.

 

Reply #39 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting NeoCortex75, reply 38
I tried the suggested methods of recovery and finally succeeded with my reinstall. Thanks for all the help.

 
End of NeoCortex75's quote
The nVidia control panel suggested methods that rossp described?

Reply #40 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting rossp, reply 37

Go to 3D Settings on the left hand pane, then in the right (where it says Manage 3D Settings) hit the Global Settings tab, then the drop-down under that should give you the option of your preferred graphics processor. I just selected the NVidia card, and presume that forces the GPU to be used and effectively disables the Intel chipset. If I'm wrong, apologies, but that's what worked for me.
End of rossp's quote


Did as you said, but it still doesnt work. I still have to disable the NVidia chip in order for mine to work. It still runs great, much better than ever, just have to go into my devices and disable the NVidia chip.

Reply #41 from Sins Forums Top

rossp method worked for me, I am using a laptop that had a Nvidia chipset with a Intel integrated chipset also present.

 

Nvidia 540GT M

6gb Ram

intel core i5

 

I'm also using multiple monitors

Reply #42 from Sins Forums Top

Glad it helped some, sorry it didn't solve all. Seems the devs are looking into this, hope it gets solved soon.

Reply #43 from Sins Forums Top

At least you guys already know its sort of a laptop related problem. 

Hope it gets fixed soon.

 

Quoting boshimi336,


 

This is typical the first few times Sins starts up either after install or after it has not been played for some time. The more you play it the less that wait is. Typically if you play once a week you shouldn't see a wait of more than 10-15 seconds during startup unless you restarted recently, then it might be closer to 20-25 seconds.

 

This is normal.
End of boshimi336's quote

 

Interesting. Im gonna keep an eye on it. Though im fine with it. Not a big deal.

Reply #44 from Sins Forums Top

hello i am a super noob i dont have that file thing i really want to play we all do can i get some live sep by step help please i am like retarted at computer stuff

 

Reply #45 from Sins Forums Top

Hey, I'm not quite sure whether this is related or not, but this appears to be the only place where issues are really getting addressed. Whenever I attempt to launch Sins, any version, nothing happens. At all. A few months back after I first installed the game on my new computer, I was getting blue screens and memory dumps everytime I tried to launch the game. A dialogue with support had me jump through a number of hoops which fixed the BSODs, but presented this new failure to launch problem when I tried to play the game a few weeks later.

I posted here on the forums a few times about this issue, and sent two seperate tickets to support, one at the regular support email and one to the rebellion beta specific address. This was about a month or so ago, and I haven't had a single reply from either, except for support telling me they'd forward my email to the rebellion team. Meanwhile, I've tried everything 10 years of PC gaming experience and the internet has to offer to solve this problem, with no progress whatsoever. I'm not getting far enough to even experience this black screen issue here, but I'd probably get that a well if I ever managed to start the game given my current luck. I'm a huge fan of sins and stardock in general, I've played sins from release till mid 2011, and wanted to play it again now that I have a decent computer suited to the task. Any help anyone can offer would be immensely appreciated.

I'm using a standard HP Pavillion dv7 Notebook, with fully up-to-date drivers and with forced HD Radeon 6770M usage for all applications. I'm also using an HP w2207 monitor for my primary display (seems rather irrelevant since the game doesn't work any better without it, but people asked about it last time...).

Also running Windows 7 64-bit. I've tried quite literally everything you can find in every corner of google and everything I've done in the past for any game ever so far, so please don't respond with the usual "update/rollback your drivers" or "run in compatability/admin/increased memory mode." I've done it, it hasn't helped :'(

Reply #46 from Sins Forums Top

Ok, seems like there's quite a few people with these problems. I'm not a real techie so can't see any common thread with what's going wrong, but a few other people have posted solutions to potential problems.

For starters, Darstaed came up with the fix that let me play Entrenchment and Diplomacy:

https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/419008

 

His post is about halfway down the page. Commardenoah, if I can follow it, it has to be pretty basic!

The new patch has sorted out the resolution problem for me and HD works.

However, if you're still stuck if you posted what graphics card you've got, sure someone here would be able to tell you how to set it to work (if it is the same problem).

Mordith, sorry you're stuck. If you've tried starting in different resolutions/windowed mode and the ATI (is it control centre? Been a few years since I had one!) settings I'd be just as lost. As shots in the dark, from what people have put here mainly you could try

* Delete AppData\Local\Ironclad Games\Sins of a Solar Empire\Setting\rebellion.user.setting

* Verify integrity of game data cache in Steam (forces download of broken files)

*Delete/disable your codecs (can't find the post now but I'm SURE someone said there was a compatability problem that screwed up their system.

 

Failing that, go out and kill a prostitute. It won't make Rebellion run, but should vent some stress.

Reply #47 from Sins Forums Top

I have Intel Core I5 CPU M460 -2.4gb

4gb ram

Nvidia 540M

 

 

Could the problem occur because of our nvidia driver version?

 

 

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EDIT

Problem fixed by installing Nvidia new 296.10 Driver version :D

Reply #48 from Sins Forums Top

I have a guess:

well, if they're all laptops, and the issue seems to be affected by higher resolutions... maybe it has to do with memory. Integrated graphics take a portion of memory from the system RAM.

So, how does this relate to Sins? I'm not sure. However, there is always a pause and a black screen... even on desktops running advanced video cards. I would supposed that Sins, on start up, tries to allocate a lot RAM space, and maybe it overloads the RAM in some way because of it (ie. it goes from HDD to RAM to VRAM x1000, that's alot going on with the RAM).

Here's how I'd test that (I can't, as I don't have a laptop): Some integrated graphics allow you to set the amount of RAM used by the integrated graphics in the BIOS (not sure if Intel's is that way or not). What I would do is find a resolution just below where the problem is occurring, then go into the BIOS and increase/decrease the VRAM size to see if that allows higher resolutions or starts causing problems on the previously working resolutions.

If you don't know what you're doing in the BIOS, don't bother trying... This isn't for you. I'm suggesting a path of investigation for someone who has this issue and knows what they're doing. This might narrow down the issue.

Reply #49 from Sins Forums Top

I'm getting this problem not stop. I have verified the local files multiple times, uninstalled and reinstalled 3 times now and all my drivers are up to date. Nothing is working. I have tried deleting rebelion_settings under app data as well. . I have two ATI 6870's in crossfire so no nvidia mobility crap.

Reply #50 from Sins Forums Top

Just pre-ordered rebellion, installed beta and experienced black screen several times though not on startup. It happens after 10-20 minutes, generates minidump and then error window shows up saying something about "InPageError". Technically - beta is unplayable for me.

I am not playing on laptop. Got Vista x64 and latest nvidia drivers. Sent minidump as well.