Black Screen on Launch - Resolved by Update to Win10.

[Hairless-Ape]

Launching game (steam) results in Black screen, with a game mouse cursor. No sound. Hangs for a long time and then eventually bails to desktop.
Have uninstalled completely several times and tried installing on 3 different drives. Have tried removing settings in C:\Users\..me..\Documents\Egosoft\X4\*
Same result.
Game is not modified in any way. Latest steam install. English.

Windows 7 Enterprise, 16G Ram, I7, latest updates. Overlay's turned off for both GeForce and teamspeak.
card: GTX 1070 Ti
Updated with Latest driver as of today 8/17/20 (v452.06) with same result.

Vulkan file
https://ufile.io/dc62q3a4

DxDiag
https://ufile.io/yvcu8o4w

Help?

[Alan Phipps]

Unfortunately Win7 does not give Windows error reporting in the DxDiag and so we have no error reports associated with the problem. You could look for associated serious or critical X4.exe issues that coincide with your black screen date/times in Event Viewer.

You have several sound devices and drivers operating at the same time and some with very old drivers even for Win7. Disable any that you do not use in Control Panel, Device Manager, Sound/Audio Devices (right-click on a device in the list for an enable/disable pop-up) and update any that you do keep. Definitely disable the Nvidia *sound* device and driver if you do not use it - you would have to do this again every time you update your graphics driver as the sound driver comes bundled within it.

You do meet the *minimum* requirements for a graphics card for X4 (3Gb dedicated VRAM) but only just.

Good luck.

[Hairless-Ape]

Disabled both Nvidia sound drivers along with my headset and motherboard sound drivers (all audio drivers) disabled. No change.
Looked at Event logs. Only thing in the time-frame were a few "Security-SPP" informational messages. No warnings or errors in any of the categories.

Anything else I could try?

[Infector]

Does it run on the correct GPU? Have you tried to force it to use the Nvidia GPU?

[Hairless-Ape]

I have only one graphics adapter in my system. Nothing is built into the motherboard. Not sure if that answers your question.
I keep fiddling with different tings and still can't get it to start. Drive spins a bit.. screen turns black.. mouse cursor changes to a game mouse cursor.. no sound.. and stays that way for a long time before eventually bailing to desktop.
Nothing in event logs at all other than system informational stuff.
Tried setting all steam X4 files so they are not read-only to no effect. Reinstalled to other drives to no effect.

I would upgrade to windows 10, but can't find all the drivers so I may finally have to pay the $ and get a new system just to play this game.

[Alan Phipps]

"Nothing in event logs at all other than system informational stuff."

That would be quite unusual if the game eventually crashes to desktop. Recording the error logging for CTDs is partly what Event Viewer is there for. Still, with a borderline graphics card it may all be moot anyway. Perhaps that is where you could invest less money than for a total new system.

[Infector]

I have only one graphics adapter in my system.

The Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3770K CPU comes with an onboard Intel® HD-Grafik 4000 gpu. Go to the nvidia control panel search for the option to use the nvidia gpu instead of the default one. I had a similar problem with x-rebirth using the igpu on my laptop instead of the nvidia one.

[Alan Phipps]

The Intel HD gpu is not registered in the DxDiag supplied and so hasn't been set up as a valid enabled device in Device Manager or BIOS.

Going by the peripheral devices attached, the OP's system is not a laptop but more a desktop PC.

[Hairless-Ape]

It is a desktop and the nvidia control panel also shows only 1 gpu in the system.

Regarding the CTD, it takes a very long time to crash (hours) and I didn't want to repeat that again to double check. So for the sake of argument, this time I cleared the event logs, ran X4 and then killed the process 10 minutes later and then re-reviewed the event logs. There is nothing there related to graphics, or x4. It only has normal system information level event logs. It may show more after a CTD, but when I reviewed them before for the time period I didn't see anything related. Yes, I could be delusional.

The thing is, X4 used to work when I had windows 7 "pro" installed before. Same hardware. I wiped the partitions and installed windows 7 enterprise, along with the latest nvidia drivers etc.. and x4 no longer is able to run.
I suspect it's like the moderator said; that my graphics card is marginal and the change to enterprise was just too much for it. It's just a shame, as I thought the 1070ti was at least a mid-end card, but it seems it is not.
I'm not blaming anyone but myself. I had just hoped there might be something I could tweak or a log I could look at somewhere to help which is why I posted here.

[Alan Phipps]

The card chipset itself is capable enough but that model is at the minimum in terms of dedicated VRAM for X4. The only reason I say that the issue could be moot using that model is that your X4 gameplay might not be that good even if we solved the blackscreen issue, and it will become progressively less good with further gameplay, empire-building, exploration and game expansions.

[Hairless-Ape]

That Sir,... is an awesome point. I really should get a better card.

Now the real challenge has to be faced. One that so many of us strive to win, but often lose.

"The Wife"

P.S. what decent reasonably priced card would you recommend (maybe under $300) ?

[Imperial Good]

Something is not right here... The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Ti was only ever made with 8 GB of video memory. Also the OS is reporting only 8 GB of physical memory when the topic creator claims they have 16 GB.

DxDiag Version: 6.01.7601.17514 32bit Unicode

I am guessing the problem is you ran the 32bit version of DXdiag which is reporting incorrect amounts of memory due to it reporting limits for 32 bit applications. Hence the 3 GB GPU. The 64bit DXdiag should show 16 GB of system memory and 8 GB of video memory. If not then your system has some problems that need sorting.

The GTX 1070 Ti is a perfectly capable card that will run X4 very well if it is genuine (from Nvidia or one of their board partners) and functioning correctly. For comparison I play X4 on a GTX 760 which is a lot older, under half the performance and half the video memory and X4 still runs well even though it is GPU bottlenecked in some scenes.

[Alan Phipps]

Good spot! Now we just need to solve the blackscreen.

[Hairless-Ape]

Ugh. Yes, I was mistaken I have only 8 GB of system ram. Boy do I feel stupid.
Also, I didn't realize there was a separate 64-bit version of dxdiag. Here is that 64-bit output.

dxdiag-64
https://ufile.io/ci4p56kg


Since this worked on windows 7 pro, and not on enterprise, perhaps it has something to do with my limited ram. Then again, the steam recommendations show 8G should be enough. They also show the 1070 card as being recommended, although the "Ti" version may be a bit of a dog. Anyway, this used to run on pro so maybe there's something involved there since enterprise is such a ram pig. I may have to go to a new system, but was hoping to squeek out another year with this one.
Thanks for the help guys. I Just wish it spat out error logs or put something relevant in the event logs so I didn't have to waste everyone's efforts.

[Alan Phipps]

Even in the 64 bit DxDiag, something is still off with your graphics card statistics that might indicate that it is faulty, not properly recognised or not set-up properly. Was it second-hand or passed on to you by someone? (Alternatively there could be an issue with DirectX/DxDiag.)

A. Display Memory: 3696 MB {Should be B+C}
B. Dedicated Memory: 3981 MB {Should be about double that}
C. Shared Memory: 3810 MB {This figure is nothing to worry about for now}

Your 8 Gb system RAM is fine for X4.

Turning to your sound drivers, the Realtek one is well out of date and can be updated here to HD Audio Codec R2.82 for Win7 x64. You have a default generic Microsoft driver for your ASUS sound device and your USB audio driver is rather dated too. Disable any sound devices and drivers that you do not use in Control Panel, Device Manager, Sound/Audio Devices (right-click on a device in the list for an enable/disable pop-up.) Unplug any USB devices that you do not use while playing.

[Hairless-Ape]

I bought the card new from Best Buy in late 2018. It's an "EVGA Nvidia Geforce GTX 1070 Ti SC Gaming 8GB GDDR5 PCI Express".
https://www.bestbuy.com/site/evga-nvidi ... Id=6146300

Driver is latest NVIDIA offers dated 8/12/2020. Driver Properties shows version 27.21.14.5206.
I've no idea why it would report less display memory given it was new from the store. Only thing I can think of is a driver issue. Probably not relevant, but the Card works with all my other games and I have a lot.

I will update my realtek driver, but I have already tried disabling all audio drivers in the device manager to no effect.

[Alan Phipps]

OK, but those sound devices/drivers are not updated or disabled in the later 64 bit DxDiag which was why I mentioned them again.

[Imperial Good]

I've no idea why it would report less display memory given it was new from the store. Only thing I can think of is a driver issue. Probably not relevant, but the Card works with all my other games and I have a lot.

Someone over on the Nvidia forums stated that this is an issue with legacy versions of Windows reporting incorrect memory sizes of GPUs. Could you try using GPU-Z (third party application) and seeing if that correctly identifies 8 GB of video memory? Looking at vulkan it might be correctly identifying the 8 GB of video memory as an appropriately sized heap exists, hence supporting that persons statement that this is an OS reporting bug.

[Alan Phipps]

A thought did occur to me that when you recently changed from Win7 Pro to Win7 Enterprise, and given that MS no longer support Win7 with updates, it may be that your current OS has not had all the updates that your prior version had and hence there is a difference in performance/stability and in the response of embedded OS tools. I could be wrong.

[Infector]

Something that came to my mind:

When was the last time you started X4 before that and which version of the game? It could be that something introduced in the recent patches uses an Instruction-set that isn't supported on his CPU. He got an Intel "Third Gen" CPU, your Games Minimum requirements on the Steam list the "Forth Gen" as Minimum requirement. Phenom CPU's had similar Problems with unsupported Instruction-sets. Sending a CPU-Z screenshot might give an answer.