EA_Nils
Community Admin
11 years agoRe: [INFO] Common Issues and Solutions
3. Black screen issues, and tiny or invisible game window
If you are experiencing a black screen, or a tiny or invisible game window after pressing 'Play' on the launcher, please ensure that you have tried the following troubleshooting steps:
- First of all, please be advised that the initial loading of the game can take some time depending on your system specifications. For higher end computers it can take anywhere up to 15 minutes for the first load to complete, for machines approaching or below our recommended minimum specifications it may take much longer. In order to allow initial loading to complete successfully, we would request that you refrain from clicking on the screen, or using the keyboard (including alt-tabbing away from the client to do something else on your system), as this can interfere with the process and generate misleading Windows error messages.
- You may need to play the game in windowed mode. A quick shortcut is to press Alt + Enter to toggle the game between Fullscreen and Windowed mode. This can specifically help those of you experiencing tiny or invisible game windows, or the "Out of Range" or "Input not supported" error messages.
- Please check the system requirements of Star Wars: The Old Republic, especially if your graphic card supports "Pixel-Shader 3.0" or higher.
- Ensure that your graphics card drivers are updated. For instructions on how to update your Graphics card please see here. If your drivers are up to date, you may have success installing a previous driver version.
- You should make sure that you have the latest version of DirectX installed on your system.
- You should check that you have the latest Service Pack and Windows Updates installed for your operating system, including optional updates such as .NET Framework and Visual C++ features.
- Run the game as an administrator.
- Make sure that you have added swtor.exe and launcher.exe as firewall exceptions.
- Check that you do not have any unnecessary third party software running in the background which may interfere with the running of the game.
- If the above troubleshooting has not resolved the issue, you may need to adjust your in-game resolution manually to match your monitor. To do so, locate the client_settings.ini file.
Never modify this file if you are not experiencing this issue. Incorrect modification of this file can create problems with your client installation.
You can do so as follows:- Press the [Windows] Key + [R] at the same time. (The [Windows] key is the key with the Windows icon on it)
- Copy the following in to the text box and press ok: %localappdata%\swtor\swtor\settings
- Open the client_settings.ini file and ensure the following are displayed within, or edit/add if so required:
- FullScreen = false
- D3DFullScreen = false
- RefreshRate = 60
- Width = 1280
- Height = 720
- Save and close the file.
- Start the game as normal.
- Change graphic settings within the game as desired.
If you are still encountering this issue after checking all of the above, please contact Customer Support.
Please include a DXDiag of your system and a description of the exact error encountered.