fix for black screen on launch

[bingusgender]

i've seen a huge number of ppl here saying their game is stuck in black screen on launch. wanted to go ahead and share what's going on here.

if your game, on launch, shows white screen then black screen then stops responding indefinitely, then you might have figured out that it's related in some way to having a controller plugged in. but it's actually much dumber, somehow - it's Malwarebytes.

open your Malwarebytes and disable the options for Real-Time Protection. i saw 4 options, disabled all 4, re-launched the game, and it works perfectly.

why is this happening? hell if i know, but it would appear a recent windows update has introduced some sort of compatibility issue between the two programs. perhaps in the future it'll be fixed and it can be re-enabled. who knows?

shout out to steam user Yok for being the first person i've seen who solved the problem.

EDIT: if you're still experiencing this at the Shadow of the Erdtree launch and you don't have Malwarebytes, i have NO idea what's causing that. can't help you there. i don't know anything about computers.

[timmbaumann]

works! thx

[dark-breed]

we know since release of this game that a lot of third party security/antivirus/antimalware software is incompatible with the security functions used by elden ring.

[MurphyTheBandChild]

I'm glad I checked the discussions. I never would have figured that out.

Thanks very much

[bingusgender]

Originally posted by dark-breed:

we know since release of this game that a lot of third party security/antivirus/antimalware software is incompatible with the security functions used by elden ring.

that's true, yes, but i've had the game for a significant amount of time now and this is the first time i've encountered this issue. and i've seen a number of people who are also experiencing it for the first time. figured it would be helpful to share this info even if it's old news.

[Curious]

thank you this fixed it

[Ashenterath]

This is the stupidest thing ever, but it works

[Kurotoge]

I'm currently reinstalling the game but I swear if it was my damn Anti virus the whole time....

[Kurotoge]

FREAKING WINDOWS/Malware Bytes! This is both frustrating and hilarious! Thank you OP!

[Slow Rick]

Yup that fixed it. Weird thing is that it was also causing dark souls 3 to not work either. Hope malwarebytes fixes whatever is causing this issue soon

[Grad]

yep i disabled malware protection and it works now.
♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ what a pain in the ass.
i tried whitelisting everything but that wont work, gotta disable malware protection

[Phireant7]

this works thank you

[Zer0h]

I was having the same issue in Sekiro, tried disabling malware protection and it worked again. I'm now updating both Malwarebytes and Windows to see if it fixes the problem without having to disable real-time protection. I'll give an update when I finish.

[Slow Rick]

Originally posted by Zer0h:

I was having the same issue in Sekiro, tried disabling malware protection and it worked again. I'm now updating both Malwarebytes and Windows to see if it fixes the problem without having to disable real-time protection. I'll give an update when I finish.

Any update yet?

[Peter]

FINALLY - I tried everything to fix this issue. This worked. Thank you my good man

[Tarch]

Thank you for this information. This did work for me as well.

I did some additional testing and after reviewing some recent reports on Malwarebytes support forums, I found a solution that seems to be working that still allows Malwarebytes real-time protection to be turned on. I found this in reviewing reports for issues with the BattleNet Client.

In the Malwarebytes client, I went to Settings > Security > Windows Security Center
and unchecked "Always register Malwarebytes in the Windows Security Center". This change allows me to use my controller with all real-time protection options on. This was suggested by a forum user as well as one of their support staff.