Re: Sims 4 Black Screen on Launch

Okay here it is!

@kzs695  Are you using your laptop in tablet form when playing, or in typical laptop form?  By that I basically mean, what is the angle between screen and keyboard?  I would be curious to know whether changing the angle had any effect on the black screens: it's possible that the problem is the connection between the laptop's motherboard and screen, not anything else.

To be thorough, I'd also like to compare the drivers you have installed with the ones HP offers for your laptop.  But I can't find the correct download page without help.  So please go here:

https://support.hp.com/us-en/drivers/laptops

Enter your laptop's serial number, choose your OS (just Windows 10 is fine) if prompted, and you'll land on the driver download page for your computer.  Please link it here.  That page doesn't contain any information about your own system, just the overall model.

I play in laptop mode, but sometimes have my screen folded back a little bit more than normal, so I'm wondering if that is what was messing it up. I didn't even think of that being a possibility! I turned off all tablet features and was able to open the game. But just incase that was a fluke, I linked below the recommended drivers for my computer. 

https://support.hp.com/us-en/drivers/hp-spectre-15-df1000-x360-convertible-pc-series/model/30012819?serialnumber=5CD01392RR&sku=7UT64UA

I appreciate your help!

@kzs695  The only major update you're missing, as far as I can tell (some drivers are cryptically named), is the newest BIOS revision.  But it's not always necessary to update the BIOS, especially if you're not seeing any issues that would be related.  I'd suggest keeping it in mind but holding off on actually updating, although if HP software pushes the update, that's fine and probably for the best.

For the Sims 4 issue, just let me know if it happens again.

Well it looks like that fix was a fluke. I went to play last night and it did the same screen flashing that it was doing before I turned off all the tablet mode options. It worked for a couple days before happening again. I’m going to look into the BIOS update later today. Any other thoughts on possible causes?

@kzs695  I'd like to see a new dxdiag if this is still happening after you update the BIOS.  Please test with both tablet options enabled and disabled, and with the screen at a standard laptop angle rather than rotated all the way into tablet orientation.

The issue still occurred after applying the BIOS update. I ran the dxdiag with the tablet options both enabled and disabled and the laptop screen in stand position. I labeled the filed as such. After the BIOS update finished, I also rebooted my computer and cleared the cache for both the EA app and Sims4 to see if that would help. 

@kzs695  As a test, try running Sims 4 on the integrated Intel graphics chip.  This is not a good long-term solution, just an experiment.  Hit Windows key-i, select System > Display > Graphics settings, click Browse, find TS4_x64.exe, and select the power-saving option.  Then restart your computer and try to play.

If that doesn't help, force the game to use the Nvidia card instead, in the same way, except you're choosing the high-performance option.

The idea here is to see if switching to the other GPU makes a difference.  Whether it does or not, it's useful information.

I changed both and was still unable to load the game without it flashing. I’m thinking it’s definitely something to do with my graphics driver, but I am out of my element on solving the problem. 

@kzs695  Since the problem happens when using each GPU, the problem is probably not the graphics card or chip or their respective drivers.  But it's still possible, so it's worth clean-uninstalling and reinstalling both drivers.  Here's how:

https://crinrict.com/blog/2019/02/clean-re-install-of-graphics-drivers-with-display-driver-uninstaller-ddu.html

Use the drivers provided by HP; you can update the Nvidia driver later, if necessary, but let's try the older one first.  The newer Nvidia driver is dated December 23, 2019, and the newest Intel driver is dated April 6, 2020.  The order of operations here is uninstall the Nvidia driver > uninstall the Intel driver > restart > install the Intel driver > restart > install the Nvidia driver > restart, all while your computer is offline.

Please test Sims 4 once with just these drivers installed.  If you get another black screen, or any other graphics weirdness, install the newest driver from Nvidia and restart again.

https://www.nvidia.com/Download/driverResults.aspx/216929/en-us/

It's possible you'll get an error when trying to install this driver—HP software sometimes blocks drivers not provided by HP.  That's fine, just let me know.