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I know its a tech support thing but im desperate
lame22334
Member Posts: 176 Arc User
I keep getting the black screen thing with swirly mouse on random times still. Did anyone find a fix for this? Drivers are all updated,etc....im just tired of having to ctrl/alt/delete to shut it down over and over till it catches.
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Thanks
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Start the game in Safe mode in the Launcher's Options, and it should fix the issue, but you'll have to reset your graphics settings when it loads in. Force Verify may work, but rarely fixes Black Screen.
Usually when something like this happens it's a particular setting in your graphics setup that's giving you the issue.
The best way to find out is start the game in safe mode as suggested above. This will set all your graphics to the bare minimum, see if that fixes the issue (the game will look awful, just see if it runs.)
If that works, then you have some work ahead of you. The best way to find out is to re-enable your graphics options one at a time until you find the setting that causes the error to return. Your first move is set your resolution back. Play for 5-10 min (or however long it usually takes to get the issue) and see if you're still good. If you are, then bump up your textures, test it, shadows, test it, you get the idea.
Usually this is an issue with Shadows, so you might want to start there.. it is most common on systems with intel integrated graphics. Usually, finding the setting causing the issue and reducing or disabling it can fix the issue. Best of luck to you.
Since it works the second time my guess is that some client-server messaging that runs in between the black screen appearing and the Cryptic logo appearing is hanging.
Many started seeing this since 4/28 and several more since 5/25 update. Though it first started happening in 2014, as I denoted for some people later referenced in thread (above) as denoted.
Seems this OLD bug has returned, so hopefully they can put it to bed soon!
The fact that Cryptic refuses to say *anything* about this bug is infuriating. How, and why should players attempt to troubleshoot the bug when Cryptic refuses to give the players any information about the bug, or past versions of it?
We are literally being left at the mercy of Cryptic to fix something that they will not even acknowledge is broken!!!
This is some of the worst, most disgusting customer service communication I have ever in my life witnessed from a game company!
I'm sure there is a good explanation for why my computer power consumption maxes out when just trying to load a black screen, right? -- To clarify, power consumption skyrockets to very high, while my hard drive is not even spinning, and the game load screen is black, and frozen.
Yes, its normal. Loading any game is going to put the CPU and disk and ram and GPU into a frenzy as they work to load everything up. The processors are going to work as fast as they are allowed to or as fast as they can do the work, whichever is slower. That process takes power to do it all. Once they have stuff loaded they should drop back down as they lack anything to do, waiting on user input most of the time.
Right. Except my CPU is running at 24%, my HD is not running at all, only 1/3 of my RAM used, and my GPU is just showing a black screen on a game that is frozen, and not even trying to load. But my power consumption is sky high.
And? What does that mean? What does 'high' or 'very high' power consumption actually mean? Is it dangerous? Is it a problem?
Let me try and put it into perspective. My PC has a Ryzen 5 3600. That chip might pull 65 watts. I've never seen it do that even at full load, based on what my other monitoring software says. My graphics card pulls up to 220 watts, but it sure doesn't need to do that for STO. My power supply is overkill at 750 watts. At any point where the CPU is under a heavy load, windows task manager tells me that whatever program is doing it is using "very high" power.
At no point am I risking running out of power from the power supply, nor is the CPU or GPU going over their limits. Its just windows saying stuff. Legitimately the program is using a lot of power in such a situation where it maxes out GPU, CPU, turns up the fans, and uses a lot of RAM, but is that ever actually an issue to be concerned about? Not really, those things are designed to operate at those levels.
A 24% CPU load sounds like one core of a 4 core processor. Not all processes are able to be split up among multiple cores, thus its heavily loading one because it has no other option. Ram doesn't ever actually use much power, however I'm fairly sure windows just adds it to the pile. Your display being a black screen doesn't necessarily mean the GPU is not doing anything. Regardless, the two biggest power consumers on a typical PC are the CPU and GPU, by a large margin.
Now I don't know about your personal system, but that's something you'd have to do the math on. How many watts is your CPU capable of using, and your GPU, added together? Then look at what else is in your system, because it all draws power, drives, USB, fans, etc. And then finally what is your power supply rated for?
Chances are you're just fine on power and windows is just blinding you with pointless facts.
To me this sounds almost hardware related, but it could be software? We'd probably need to summon a trained repair tech or something to help with this. I mean I have a couple certs but... they're from when XP was still a thing.
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I do not get a power warning, just checking task manager shows that STO.exe is using 'very high' power draw, and 24% cpu from a 3.3ghz i3 chip. No spinning HD, no video, game is frozen, not even trying to load...
To compare, a youtube vid uses 9% cpu, and 'moderate' power on my potato comp. It is something wrong with STO. And Cryptic has had this same problem since forever, and NEVER provides any details whatsoever for what may be causing, or contributing to the problem. Nor has Cryptic ever provided information on how they "fixed" the problem in the past. This is beyond frustrating.
I've not done my drivers recently, but as pointed out, this game doesn't use anything new and probably nothing in a driver update will affect how this game works at this point. We would need some sort of debug on luanch to see where the game hangs, as its not crashing or not "not responding" so no crash reports are made.
--side note--
doing a force verify because crashed randomly at klingon academy, have also had more crashes this past week than the whole of last year.
You have an issue but I doubt it's related to power draw. I hope you get up and running asap.
https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/startrekonline/#/discussion/1261957/cant-even-load-game-since-5-25-update-just-black-screen
I admit that I only seen it once after the 5/25 update, despite some seeing it about 4/28. Sadly I uninstalled and reinstalled the game to then resolve the problems.
"The one thing I recalled in the weeks around 4/28 that I recall experiencing was sometimes I had realized my GPU was working harder than it would normally. Yet I recall when I checked Options at the time, under Display (options) it was reporting Resolution Scale at 1.50 which is highly strange! Simply cause it's not me doing that, and I can't even normally choose anything above 1.00 (as its maximum) values. So when I scroll options down and go back up it changes it back to 1.00 and can't even go higher."
That perhaps started around 4/28 to 5/25 as you'll see by several referenced threads I've mentioned above. A few have also started seeing Game Crashes since 5/25 as well during TFO's at times.
It's also very similar to an (old) 2014 bug that was posted (which is linked in the thread) above as symptoms appear very similar to the current one in the BUG/Support Forum.
I did Safe Mode start-up when it happened to me last week and it's not happened again since.
All I could suggest is to verify the game files in case one was corrupted or something. Because I think the client is still in the process of trying to connect to the internet to connect to the server when you first hit Engage. So I don't think it would be server side as you haven't exactly connected yet. Outside of that... Not sure what else to suggest. Unless you see similar behavior from other games...
Honestly hardware problems feel easier to deal with than software.
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