Black Screen in Full Screen Mode on Start Up

[dragon1009]

Hi all,

Hoping someone can help with this issue I am having:

I installed the game lastnight, ran through the tutorial in full screen mode just fine. I loaded the game up today and it goes through all the intro screens and then when it comes to the point where it would normally show the "Start new game", etc options, the screen goes black but I can still hear the music playing. At this point, I cannot do anything but reboot. I cannot ctrl-alt-delete, alt-tab, alt-enter, start menu button...nothing works except a hard reboot.

I set the options to start in windowed mode and it loaded up just fine, but as soon as I go to Full screen - it goes black and I am stuck again. Can't even get back to windowed mode.

I am just baffled that the game ran just fine lastnight and nothing changed in my PC from then until today.

I am running on an HP Firebird
Windows Vista 64 bit Home Premium
4 GB RAM
(2) GeForce 9800s in SLI
All the latest drivers from HP (you must use HP drivers for this rig - nvidia ones do not work yet as the SLI setup uses a modified variant of the mobile laptop video cards so HP does some proprietary tweaking to the drivers - that is being worked on)

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. I was hooked after the tutorial and I'm dying to play more!

Thanks!
Cory

 

[Lord Shields]

I'm going to say you explained the problem just fine in your last paragraph. The fact that you're using graphics drivers that are not standard for the device may be causing the problem. NVidia needs NVidia drivers. I wouldn't trust another company to provide graphics drivers for me to game and would expect problems such as yours.

Now it's rather odd it worked once but didn't after though. So let's not assume right away that it's the problem (the drivers). Has anything changed since the first and last time running the game? Have you checked the internal temperature of the computer to see if it's rising too high and therefore not displaying the game correctly.

This reminds of the problem this guy had:

http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,66766.0.html

Now his seems to be a fan or cooling issue. But, his game runs the game in the background (you can hear it) but you can't see it, and you can't exit (having to manually hit the reset). You might try what was suggested to him to see if it's the same problem or in fact a drivers issue.

 

[dragon1009]

I am 99% certain it is not a heat issue due to the following facts:

- PC is less than a month old (not dusty inside at all)
- The Firebird uses a liquid cooling system (there are zero fans in the case)
- The core temp is still reports fine, in fact the PC (intel I7 quad core) is not working very hard to run M&B. It runs at 100 FPS in windowed mode (if I could lose the mouse pointer in windowed, it would be a decent work around for now)

Now I completely agree with you on the Graphics driver issue. I have always used the latest drivers from my video card manufacturer in the past, however, that is not currently possible with the Firebird. This quote was taken from HP admin on their Firebird support site:
--------------------------------
Re: firebird 803 nvidia drivers questions?

iMaxx
Administrator
Posts: 1356
Registered: 06-05-2008

"I know what's going on.
The GPU's we have in the Firebirds have a slightly different Hardware ID than the 'regular' 9800's.
So the only 'official' drivers you can get are from HP's site. (181 I beleive.)
I have been in talks with R&D and nVidia and I was told that this issue is being fixed. It's just a matter of when."
------------------------------
So, on the driver front, I just need to wait for HP to release a driver update, or for nvidia to work support for the proprietary mobile version of the 9800s into their driver package.
I play a host of other games without any problems on the current drivers (WoW, Bioshock, Crysis, Fallout 3, etc). Not that this means my issue is not driver related, but just for troubleshooting purposes...just seems odd that games I would say are considerably more graphics/processor intensive don't give the system any trouble.

In responce to your other queuery: Has anything changed from first to last time playing - No, not a thing. I literally played in full screen mode fine the night I installed and then could not load in Full screen mode the next day (PC was off all night until I got home, booted up, and attempted to play.

Something just occured to me though - I only tried alt-enter into full screen from the menu screens. I wonder if it would switch to full screen correctly from the actual game world. I'll try that and report back here.

My brain hurts, lol
Any other ideas?

 

[dragon1009]

UPDATE:

Tried a few troubleshooting steps and found what is causing the black screen in full screen mode:

Setting Antialiasing to "Off" corrected the problem.

I can now start in windowed mode and use Alt-Enter to go into fullscreen, or I can start the game in full screen mode and everything appears to work just fine.

The issue is either related to my HP proprietary video drivers, or to M&B's implementation of Antialiasing on my video cards (nvidia GeForce 9800s for the HP Firebird).

I tend to lean towards the latter explanation as other games work just fine with Antialiasing turned on at 2X, 4X, even 8X.

Either way, I can now play the game in fullscreen. (yay!) Perhaps the developers can take a look at the Antialiasing code and/or graphics engine to see if there is a way to broaden the spectrum of supported video cards?

Thanks all!
Cory

 

[Lord Shields]

I was going to say to start changing your settings to see if something works... so good to see you got it figured out. That's a LOT of above the norm things you need to do to get it going (by doing windowed, alting, etc). It's a shame HP doesn't allow you to use the correct drivers. :\

 

[dragon1009]

Indeed!

I will try to remember to come back here and post when HP releases an updated driver with better AA support, or nvidia adds the "special" 9800s device ID to their standard driver pack, for any other Firebird users out there.

In the meantime...I must say that M&B is easily one of the most enjoyable gaming experiences I have had in a looong time. Bravo developers! The amount of depth you have crafted into this game, that is deceptively simple to play, is quite remarkable. I havene't been addicted like this since EverCrack =)

-Cory

 

[Darian]

I must say that M&B is easily one of the most enjoyable gaming experiences I have had in a looong time. Bravo developers! The amount of depth you have crafted into this game, that is deceptively simple to play, is quite remarkable. I havene't been addicted like this since EverCrack =)

If you think it's addictive now, you'd better stay far away from the upcoming Warband expansion.

 

[Lord Nev]

I have the same problem (described ::here::), but nothing gets better when I turn the antialiasing off... In my case, the problem is also the same wether I play in full screen or not.

And I have another graphic card (GEforce 9800GX2, up to date drivers and directX).

Maybe you (or someone else) know what is specifically related to the graphic card trouble, or what should I try to change more precisely ?