help! --- black screen ----

[TheSpoink]

when i opened the game everything was fine i clicked on start game, then there was a tutorial, but the screen was black and i had to go to a paitning but i couldnt see it! please help!

[Combustible Lemons]

What you have to do is go into the options and click on keyboard. Then click on advanced. Then enable the developer console. Press ~ to open it. Then type this command while in -game:
mat_postprocess_enable 0. You will have to do this each time you want to play.

[WTFPeanutButter]

Try re-installing Portal 2, if it doesn't work, contact Valve about this. Could be some kind of "requirement" that you do not have.

[paulk92]

Change the resolution in the options. I had the same problem and this worked for me.

[edesignspl]

Good luck fixing this. Might be quicker to just start over if you haven't got very far and hope it doesn't happen again.

This happened to me early last summer. I've been going round and round with Steam support recently to no avail. They've had me verify file integrity, delete and reinstall Portal 2, delete and reinstall Steam, delete files from the registry, send them dxdiag files, try safe modes...no solution. I don't think that anything had changed on my computer either, not even the video driver, from the last time it worked to when it went to the black screen (no audio looping, seems to work fine except the black screen).

Older saved games and new games appear to work fine but I have not tested to see if they incur the same problem after a while. My system is more than enough for this game (2500K, GTX 570 Lightning, 8Gb RAM, blah blah) and it seems to be a problem with the save file corrupting. If it was a hardware issue then it would occur any time I tried to start a game...saved or new. I don't know what can get corrupted in a save file that could impact the video. It seems odd.