Black screen, no sound, won't launch | Forums

[Twincharger]

Hi there,

I'm really eager to play this game but right now I can't as it just won't launch . It installed just fine, downloaded and installed patch 1.02 at first launch but then every time I try to run the game the screen just goes black (my monitor menu says 1280x960, 60Hz), there is no sound and it just sits there forever. I have to kill the EXE in task manager. Tried the DX9 executable and XP SP2 compatibility mode, same thing.

System specs:
Vista Home Premium 32bit fresh install, all updates installed
- Gigaybte EP45T-UD3LR, 4GB DDR3-1066, Core2Duo E8400
- eVGA GTX260 Core216 55nm, Driver 185.85 (latest)
- beQuiet! 650W PSU
- Realtek onboard sound, latest driver
- Samsung Syncmaster 215TW, 1680x1050

This system is stable as rock, cool and quiet (2x 120mm case fans) and runs everything else including games like Race Driver GRID just fine for hours without any glitches, just HAWX won't work. Any ideas?

Thanks!

[scavenger67]

try this and see if that help you or not

or each game or benchmark short cut. i would right click them and go to properties. then the Advance tab at the bottom i click on it and select the box for Run as Administrator .

the at the top tabs, the 1 that is name Compatibility , then there is 2 box i put a check in. they are Disable visual themes and Disable desktop composition

i do that for every game and benchmark i use in vista.

but im still not sure why you dont have any sound though at start. do you have any error that pop up at all when this happens?

did you check the forum to see if anyone else has had this happen to them 1st yet?

[Master_Cylinder]

Originally posted by scavenger67:
the at the top tabs, the 1 that is name Compatibility , then there is 2 box i put a check in. they are Disable visual themes and Disable desktop composition

I just check "Disable Visual Themes" but I don't check the other. I rarely get a black screen at start up (when I do it has sound though) but I fix it by alt-tabbing (or Ctrl-Alt-Del (Task Manager)) to the desktop and then click on the HAWX button on the taskbar to go back in the game. That's always worked for me with Vista64 and DX10.

[Twincharger]

Thanks for this, tried with these options in the shortcut properties but no change. I have also fiddled with setting resolutions/windowed mode directly in the settings.ini file in both the hawx program, documents and saved games directory to no avail. According to my monitor the game then launches in the desired resolution but the screen remains black and there is no sound. hawx.exe does not use any CPU cycles, just does nothing, have to kill it in task manager. Disconnected all USB devices except mouse and keyboard, didn't help either.

What is even more strange is that on another machine I just tried it and it works almost fine. That is, I too got the black screen but with sound (with patch 1.02!) once at first launch but Alt-Tab and back solved that and it has not happened again. This machine has an Intel DP45SG mainboard, same chipset as the Gigabyte but different soundchip (IDT vs. Realtek). It also has a GTX285 instead of the GTX260 but same driver version. I'm beginning to suspect it may be a sound issue.

Anyway, I'll give it a few more tries but after that I'll have to return the game. Too bad

[cym104]

You may have encountered the (in)famous "dump error",
you can tell that by looking for another hawx window in your taskbar.

[Twincharger]

I've read about that but I don't get the dump error, at least there is no .dmp file in the HAWX program folder.

[Master_Cylinder]

If you suspect it's a sound issue you might try disabling the onboard sound in the bios just to see if it loads. You should also make sure you have the latest chipset drivers...

[Twincharger]

OK I fixed the problem. Turned out that somehow DirectInput was corrupted. When I ran dxdiag it was taking forever at the DirectInput tab, with the progress bar stuck at 50%. I deleted the infcache.1 file in Windows\Inf, deleted all HID devices in device manager, rebooted and now HAWX runs like a bat out of hell Just thought I'd let you know.

[Master_Cylinder]

Originally posted by Twincharger:
OK I fixed the problem. Turned out that somehow DirectInput was corrupted. When I ran dxdiag it was taking forever at the DirectInput tab, with the progress bar stuck at 50%. I deleted the infcache.1 file in Windows\Inf, deleted all HID devices in device manager, rebooted and now HAWX runs like a bat out of hell Just thought I'd let you know.

Glad you figured it out and it wasn't HAWX after all...

[scavenger67]

wow glad you got it fix. my clan m8 still loose his soudn once in a while during a game in coop yet.

and some time he will loose all joy stick controls as well. but then most time he can get it back to. but weird that this game has produce the most wild problem out of any game yet.