Game won't load, screen stays black after pressing play on the launcher

[Lange_666]

Last played Elite (Horizons 4.0, regular version, non Steam) 2 days ago, all fine.
After the session, game closed fine.
Yesterday wanted to continue but when i hit play on the launcher, the game starts to load but the screen stays black, no logo's, no entering into the game.
I can see on the task manager that the CPU still shows between 2 to 6% activity. Only option to get out is killing the process in the task manager.
Retried a few times, rebooted and retried, no go.
Searched for solutions on the net, found a few, none of them worked.
Validated game files through the launcher (a few times), no joy.
Uninstalled and re-installed through the launcher, no joy.
Uninstalled and installed Horizons (non 4.0) instead. Same issue on this install.
Uninstalled Elite entirely through control panel and removed all Elite traces (also in User files).
Rebooted and re-installed launcher and from there Horizons 4.0 again. No joy, still a black screen going nowhere after hitting play on the launcher.
All my other games (DCS, MSFS) work fine.

Info: latest nVidia drivers, no overclock or undervolt or whatever on CPU or GPU.
Didn't install any other updates or changed settings.

I'm at the end of my line here, still looking at that black screen.

System specs in signature.

 

[Lange_666]

Q: Is there a log file to check ?

 

[metatheurgist]

You can try poking around here

%userprofile%\appdata\Local\Frontier Developments\Elite Dangerous\Options\Player

There's a log file there

 

[Marvin the Martian]

Have you tried starting the game in 3.8 instead of 4.0?

 

[Lange_666]

@metatheurgist : No log file in there, only custom setups (no log file anywhere to be found).
@Mavin the Martian: How do i do that, i only have the option Horizons (4.0) and Horizons on the Laucher (also Elite Dangerous, Arena and Single Player Combat but i never used those). If 3.8 is Horizons then i already tried that, same issue.

What i don't get it why this all of sudden happens now, nothing extra installed between last played and now, not even a Windows update or anything.
In the mean time i also cleared the videodrivers (which weren't updated nor changed, not touched the settings either) and re-installed. No joy, still a black screen after launch.
If i end the client process in Task Manager, then on first try get an non responding message, on the second the process is ended.

 

[Marvin the Martian]

Yeah. The regular Horizons is the 3.8 version.

Black screens are normally a video card error. Out of curiosity, what power supply are you running?

 

[Lange_666]

Corsair HX1200W Platinum.
If i check power usage it's like running on idle.
DCS and Mircrosoft Flightsim run fine.

 

[Fnord Velkor]

There is a way to reset the game's graphics setup - maybe someone can remember what you have to do - I think it is to delete the contents of the graphics folder in the options directory:

%LOCALAPPDATA%\Frontier Developments\Elite Dangerous\Options\Graphics

... but I am not sure so make a backup before doing that.

EDIT: See @Marvin the Martian post below...

 

[Lange_666]

I started fresh with those (in fact everything concerning settings) removed.

 

[Marvin the Martian]

There is a way to reset the game's graphics setup - maybe someone can remember what you have to do - I think it is to delete the contents of the graphics folder in the options directory:

%LOCALAPPDATA%\Frontier Developments\Elite Dangerous\Options\Graphics

... but I am not sure so make a backup before doing that.

Found this elsewhere:

Elite Dangerous\Products\elite-dangerous-odyssey-64\OptionDefaults
Back up and delete the files in that folder, and then start the launcher.
Launcher - Options - Enable Virtual Cache - remove checkmark.
Restart launcher.
Launcher - Options - Validate Game Files.
Start the game.

 

[Lange_666]

Yeah i found that one also already but it didn't work.

 

[Marvin the Martian]

Then that's about all I guess.

I'm running an EVGA 3060 Ti and have no issues at all. The only other thing I can think of is that you're running some sort of profiler and that's messing things up. Have you disconnected all of your other items from the computer? (Controller, VR Headset, etc.) and restarted the system and tried again?

 

[Lange_666]

No, not yet. That was going to be my next step.
I had no issues the last couple of days either. Wanted to continue yesterday and well....

 

[Lange_666]

Got it working again:
Steps:
Removed everything referring Frontier in User\MyName\AppData\Local again.
Didn't work.
Then i thought that it could be in VR mode without me knowing. Started again with the headset active but no Elite in VR which i found normal because i haven't played Elite in VR in a long time and certainly not since i reinstalled everything on my new PC.
Then i made a copy of the Launcher icon and added the novr option in the launcher exe and bang... no more black screen.
Ii know that in one of the last settings i played around with the stereosetting under 3D but i put those back to default and as far as i can remember didn't set 3D to on + otherwise Elite should have run in VR in the previous step + with removing everything found under options it should have started fresh, non VR.
Copied bindings back into User\MyName\AppData\Local and everything runs fine now... weird.