Black screen when logging in

Lambtron · September 2021

Over the last few days, when launching the game, all I get is a blank screen, with the ingame cursor. Usually, the launch logos will play out (Bethesda, Zenimax, etc), except now they do not. Also, the soundtrack plays immediately. I have repaired, reinstalled, even to a different drive, and updated to the latest Nvidia drivers, still the same problem. In all the years I have been playing ESO, I have never encountered this problem before. Any help will be greatly appreciated, as I am missing out on login rewards as a consequence of this.

ZOS_Adrikoth · September 2021

Hey there @Lambtron

Please be sure to try all of the troubleshooting steps in this article.

If the issue continues to occur after these steps, then please open a support ticket with us at help.elderscrollsonline.com

barrrt · September 2021

This has just started happening to me as well.

Played mid-day without any issues, took a break, played some NMS, then D2, and wanted to do a little more ESO before calling it a day.... and nope.

I just get black screen with mouse cursor. Alt tabbing shows the log in screen, so alt-tab back and fps on the log in is very low, the bottom text crawls like on an 80s computer. I can log in, but then it crashes.

I tried rebooting, repairing, checking my drivers, etc. I disabled multithreaded rendering, and removed add-ons. I tried starting without launcher as well, but same effect. I tried deleting ShaderCache.cooked.

I started both D2 and NMS to make sure other games are fine, and they are both fine, so it is ESO only issue.

Then I tried the PTS client, and.... same problem as live. Not sure what to make of that.

barrrt · September 2021

@Lambtron I found a temporary solution (because it lowers FPS by about a third for me) in a 2015 post on Steam forums.

Players who have an APU as well as a dedicated graphics card, and are experiencing a blank/black screen or a crash after pressing Play can try the following:
Navigate to C:\Users\<USERNAME>\Documents\Elder Scrolls Online\Live or C:\Users\<USERNAME>\Documents\Elder Scrolls Online\LiveEU
Open the UserSettings.txt file
Find the lines SET RequestedNumJobThreads and SET RequestedNumWorkerThreads and change their values from "-1" to "0".
They should then look like this:
SET RequestedNumJobThreads "0"
SET RequestedNumWorkerThreads "0"
Save the file.

barrrt · September 2021

And... it's working fine now. Tried to put "-1" in both entries this morning, and game starts fine now and FPS is back to ~90 in Mournhold (was around 30 with "0"s). Nothing else changed about my laptop's set up, so for some reason running with "0"s must have reset something internal to ESO.

Anyways, just thought I'd post this in case it helps someone.

Lambtron · September 2021

barrrt wrote: »

@Lambtron I found a temporary solution (because it lowers FPS by about a third for me) in a 2015 post on Steam forums.

Players who have an APU as well as a dedicated graphics card, and are experiencing a blank/black screen or a crash after pressing Play can try the following:
Navigate to C:\Users\<USERNAME>\Documents\Elder Scrolls Online\Live or C:\Users\<USERNAME>\Documents\Elder Scrolls Online\LiveEU
Open the UserSettings.txt file
Find the lines SET RequestedNumJobThreads and SET RequestedNumWorkerThreads and change their values from "-1" to "0".
They should then look like this:
SET RequestedNumJobThreads "0"
SET RequestedNumWorkerThreads "0"
Save the file.

I tried this, and unfortunately, the problem persists.

ZOS_Bill · September 2021

@Lambtron

Would you be able to post your system specifications, such as the GPU and CPU of your system?

This information can be found by creating a DxDiag report.

Lambtron · September 2021

ZOS_BillE wrote: »

@Lambtron

Would you be able to post your system specifications, such as the GPU and CPU of your system?

This information can be found by creating a DxDiag report.

Certainly:
CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-7400 CPU @ 3.00GHz (4 CPUs), ~3.0GHz
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti

If you need any other info, please let me know.

ZOS_Bill · September 2021

@Lambtron

Thank you for listing your CPU and GPU.

Have you tried lowering the resolution in ESO to see how that affects the black screen you've been getting?

Lambtron · September 2021

ZOS_BillE wrote: »

@Lambtron

Thank you for listing your CPU and GPU.

Have you tried lowering the resolution in ESO to see how that affects the black screen you've been getting?

I cannot enter the game in order to do that. The only options I have are in the launcher, and none (that I can see) pertain to settings ingame.

ZOS_Bill · September 2021

@Lambtron

Instead you can delete the usersetting and sharedcache files by following these steps below.

Open up the Documents folder on your computer.
Open the Elder Scrolls Online folder, then open the Live folder.
Find the ShaderCache and UserSettings files.
Create copies of each file, then delete the originals.
Close everything and start ESO again.

NOTE: This will reset all in-game settings to their defaults.

Please see if this helps with the black screen at login.

Lambtron · September 2021

ZOS_BillE wrote: »

@Lambtron

Instead you can delete the usersetting and sharedcache files by following these steps below.
Open up the Documents folder on your computer.

Open the Elder Scrolls Online folder, then open the Live folder.

Find the ShaderCache and UserSettings files.

Create copies of each file, then delete the originals.

Close everything and start ESO again.

NOTE: This will reset all in-game settings to their defaults.

Please see if this helps with the black screen at login.

THANK YOU! This finally got it sorted out!

ZOS_Bill · September 2021

Thank you for the update and that the last recommended steps has stopped the black screen. With the issue now resolved, we are going to lock this discussion.