Switched to fullscreen and now game won't play

[thesmittenone]

I switched over to full screen from windowed mode (was looking some stuff up on guides), and when I ended the game, the screen went completely black. I had to turn off my system to get my screen back, and when I tried to relaunch the game, a window with Dark Souls in the upper left hand corner appears like it always has, but now the game will not launce no matter how long I wait. I've tried looking for a .ini file to manually change the fullscreen/windowed setting, but can't find it. I've tried changing the resolution of my monitor to see if that would do anything to the game when it launched, but that didn't do anything. I even uninstalled and reinstalled the game, and that didn't change anything. Even if I have to erase my save data, I don't know where to find it. I run a Windows 10 64 bit machine with 16 gigs of ram and a gtx 970 graphics card on an nvme solid state drive. If anyone has any ideas, that would be awesome.

[Groen90]

Maybe the game is running at a resolution your monitor doesn't support or something.
The game's config file is in AppData\Local\NBGI\DarkSouls you can change back to windowed from there, or change the resolution

[thesmittenone]

Thank you very much for responding so quickly! The first setting in the .ini file was [DisplaySetting]. It was set to 0, so I changed it to 1, assuming that would change the game to windowed mode, but when I started the game up I had the same result as before: a black screen that wouldn't change. Did I enter the wrong number? I also tried changing the screen resolution as you suggested. I changed the width to 800 and the height to 600 under the two settings [DisplaySettingWindow] and [DisplaySettingFullScreen] with [DisplaySetting] WindowMode at 0 and at 1. Still a black screen under both 0 and 1. I turned my computer off and then back on before this experiment and I also used the option of Validate Game Files with Steam before and after these experiments and both times it said the game was good. I'm starting to worry about the game at this point. My other Steam games work fine. Any ideas?

[Groen90]

Try deleting the config file (or just move it somewhere else as backup) and launching the game, it should re-generate the file with default settings. Hopefully it will work... note that this also resets your keyboard bindings if you changed them.

[thesmittenone]

It generated a new .ini file (I moved the old one to desktop so as to not delete it), but the game is still a black screen. Other Steam games still work and game files are still verified. Should I do something with DirectX? Or maybe try moving the games save files to Desktop to see if they're the problem (dreading the thought of that with my main file having logged in over 200 hours)? Where are the games save files?

[Groen90]

oh boy I really doubt the saves are the problem but just so you know they're located in your Documents\NBGI\DarkSouls folder. This game also has steam cloud so they're stored there, too.

I should have asked this sooner but can you hear any sounds in-game, like menu sounds? Or is it completely not responding at all?

[thesmittenone]

There are no sounds whatsoever. Even after I waited for five minutes on the black screen before even moving my mouse and then pressing the A (confirm) and B (cancel) buttons multiple times. And this black screen was after I moved my old save file to desktop, deleted both NBGI folders from Documents and AppData and turned off the Steam Cloud sync option so it should have been a brand new game. Still nothing.

[Groen90]

Try unplugging any controllers you might have.

[thesmittenone]

I didn't mention this before, but Steam did something weird after I turned off my computer because the screen went black the first time. When I turned my computer back on and relaunched Steam, I decided to play Mortal Kombat X (so the order was 1. played Dark Souls, 2. quit out of the game normally to a full black screen, 3. turned off my computer, 4. turned the computer back on to get the screen to reappear, 5. relaunced Steam, 6. decided to switch over to Mortal Kombat X), and Steam made me re-agree to the EULA before playing the game. Mortal Kombat X played just fine with my save data intact. Since this is so weird I thought I would include this detail since it was also weird.

[thesmittenone]

Controller is unplugged.

[Groen90]

Originally posted by thesmittenone:

I didn't mention this before, but Steam did something weird after I turned off my computer because the screen went black the first time. When I turned my computer back on and relaunched Steam, I decided to play Mortal Kombat X (so the order was 1. played Dark Souls, 2. quit out of the game normally to a full black screen, 3. turned off my computer, 4. turned the computer back on to get the screen to reappear, 5. relaunced Steam, 6. decided to switch over to Mortal Kombat X), and Steam made me re-agree to the EULA before playing the game. Mortal Kombat X played just fine with my save data intact. Since this is so weird I thought I would include this detail since it was also weird.

yeah... looks like something odd happened there, but I have no idea what, it's the first time I hear of this problem. As a last resort I'd try to unlplug any other usb devices (yes even mouse and keyboard) some people said it fixed the black screen on launch for them.

Also since it's not entirely clear if the problem is the game itself or even if it's steam that ♥♥♥♥♥♥ something up at this point, it might be good to ask in the general help&tips forum as well, explaining what you did step by step:
http://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/1/

[thesmittenone]

YES! IT'S WORKING! I unplugged all my USB devices, replugged them all in and now my game works, old save data and all. Thank you so much Groen90! I was scared for the future of Lordran there lol! This took quite a while to take care of, so thank you for sticking with me to the end. What in the world does USB technology have to do with Dark Souls?!? Anyway, back to enjoying my game! Have a very blessed rest of your day!

[Groen90]

Originally posted by thesmittenone:

What in the world does USB technology have to do with Dark Souls?!?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzKKjJuujSs

but I'm glad it works

[thesmittenone]

Gandalf presenting me with a Nep and a beer on top of my game working. Today, brother, life is good!