Sims 4 Black Screen on Launch
My Sims4 has started launching with a flickering black screen. When the game loads, I can hear the theme music, but can only see the load screen if I click out of the game play screen. I have to clos...
Forum Discussion
@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:
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.
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