screen randomly turns black whilst playing

[pharmakos]

it gets fixed by hitting alt+enter to switch to fullscreen, but its pretty annoying. sometimes it will happen a few times in a row, and sometimes i'll get disconnected while switching to/from full screen.

it seems to be connected to some sort of graphics overload or something? seems like it'll be triggered when a new particle effect occurs. the light on my monitor will switch from green to orange for a sec, then when it goes back to green everything else in windows will reappear... but my EQ client's screen will be black.

i'm using a pretty crappy computer.... acer aspire one 255 netbook.... intel atom n450.... only 1gb of ram... windows 7...

any know any easy fixes that don't require purchasing new hardware?

[pharmakos]

oh, also -- this doesn't occur when playing EQLive or EQMac. it's only happened on P99.

[Lyra]

I can tell you that most of the issues I've run into with the game not starting properly stemmed from windowed mode not being set correctly in eqclient.ini. Open that file in a text editor and see that you have lines that look like this:


WindowedMode=TRUE

WidthWindowed=1024
HeightWindowed=768
WindowedWidth=1024
WindowedHeight=768
If the height/width numbers are different, that's probably fine. Any resolution you want should work. I think all that matters is that both resolutions match, and that WindowedMode is set to true.

[pharmakos]

the game starts properly... this issue typically doesn't pop up until i've already been playing for an hour or two

[aubie]

Just noticed this today. I click on the right side of my screen (where I have pet window) while in full screen (and it's outside the area of windowed mode and it immediately collapses to desktop with tab in taskbar). Click on that tab and screen restores in windowed mode (which is much smaller than full screen). NEVER HAD THIS PROBLEM BEFORE THIS LAST WEEK OR BEFORE THE ANNOUNCEMENT ABOUT EQMAC DYING (but haven't logged in since that announcement before today). What changed? If not corrected, will probably be a game breaker for me (not that anyone cares at the moment with the influx of EQMAC players).

I was able to move Pet Window while in windowed mode to left side of screen, but when restoring to full screen, pet window goes back to original position on right side of screen and when I right click to unlock and move it, crashes back to desktop taskbar and alt-enter bring windowed mode up and pet screen is back to left side where I moved it. Alt-enter and pet window jumps back to right side of screen and then I get to repeat the circle when I try to click it again. Whoopee!

[Sirbanmelotz]

Aliens

[JayN]

Just noticed this today. I click on the right side of my screen (where I have pet window) while in full screen (and it's outside the area of windowed mode and it immediately collapses to desktop with tab in taskbar). Click on that tab and screen restores in windowed mode (which is much smaller than full screen). NEVER HAD THIS PROBLEM BEFORE THIS LAST WEEK OR BEFORE THE ANNOUNCEMENT ABOUT EQMAC DYING (but haven't logged in since that announcement before today). What changed? If not corrected, will probably be a game breaker for me (not that anyone cares at the moment with the influx of EQMAC players).

I was able to move Pet Window while in windowed mode to left side of screen, but when restoring to full screen, pet window goes back to original position on right side of screen and when I right click to unlock and move it, crashes back to desktop taskbar and alt-enter bring windowed mode up and pet screen is back to left side where I moved it. Alt-enter and pet window jumps back to right side of screen and then I get to repeat the circle when I try to click it again. Whoopee!
this is why everyone plays windowed mode so you are not constantly clicking thru a wrapper

As for the screen going black try and alt+enter or vice cersa fixed it for me or a relog

[pharmakos]

As for the screen going black try and alt+enter or vice cersa fixed it for me or a relog

yup that does work as a temporary fix, but its pretty annoying having to do that. it takes a good 30 seconds to switch to full screen. i'm often main tank, 30 seconds is long enough for shit to go wrong heh.

[JayN]

30 seconds holy crap whats your computers specs? im on a couple year old machine and it most take 5 seconds for rendering.

are your video drivers up to date?

[rixardion]

I've run into the problem of full screen still allowing clicks through to desktop. I solved this by going to options while in full screen and just choose the same resolution again and click ok. This fixes it for me.

[pharmakos]

30 seconds holy crap whats your computers specs? im on a couple year old machine and it most take 5 seconds for rendering.

are your video drivers up to date?

currently playing on a $150 Acer netbook haha... only 1 gig of RAM and its got Windows 7 on it.... not nearly enough ram for a Windows 7 machine

[aubie]

I went into EQ client ini file and adjusted the numbers on windowed mode to be the same as full screen size and that seems to have eliminated the "click through" problem and collapse down to task bar.

Thanks for suggesting that!

[pharmakos]

another oddity about my black screen issue -- it hasn't happened once on Red so far. 2 days and 10 hours /played on my Paladin.

wtf. happens within a few hours on Blue every time i play.

[JayN]

currently playing on a $150 Acer netbook haha... only 1 gig of RAM and its got Windows 7 on it.... not nearly enough ram for a Windows 7 machine

have you tried disabling Aero interface and going to a classic theme, this should help with freeing up resources.

Also may want to increase your alloted virtual memory value

[pharmakos]

aero interface?