Have been playing for days (in Serenia now) and went to start the game: the small screen with the book appears, then the screen goes black(as it usually does just before the large full screen version of the book appears) and then goes back to my desktop. No error message, no nothing. Any suggestions?

Welcome to the Myst 4 forums.

Yep, I do have a suggestion.

Add a "dxdiag" report in here as per Heimdall's instructions found at the bottom of this post...To Post a "DxDiag" report section/instructions...click here