Monitor Signal Loss/Black Screen On Gameplay Load

[Moosefalva101]

So I've reinstalled NMS again after some time off and loaded up to check out the new update. First, I loaded my old NMS Next save. It started me falling through space towards a planet and once I reached a height moments from smashing into the planet surface the screen went black, i received the monitor signal loss message but could still hear game audio to some extent. I restarted my computer and retried this several times with the same result. Everything I've tried so far:

Updated the drivers for my Geforce GTX 1080 - No help
Deleted my ASUS ROG monitor drivers and reinstalled latest from ASUS website - No help
Deleted the NMS Settings directory in the Steam folder, resetting to defaults - no help
Updated the video settings in game from Fullscreen to Windowed Borderless - no help
Manually entered Windowed Borderless settings in the settings file - no help
Switched from 1080p to 2k resolution and from 2k to 1080p resolution - no help
Uninstalled and reinstalled NMS via Steam - No Help

I'm connected via DisplayPort on a native 2k monitor. I could try switching to HDMI, however, I'm not particularly interested in jumping through that hoop since it'll reduce my monitor's refresh rate.

Anyone else had this issue with NMS since Beyond or prior to and were you able to fix it doing something aside from the above?

Thanks,

FYI TO ANYONE SEEING THIS THREAD AND STILL HAVING SIMILAR ISSUES. I SOLVED MY PROBLEM AND POSTED THE COMPLETE SOLUTION ON MAY 2nd, 2020. SEE REPLIES BELOW.

[Moosefalva101]

Still seeing this issue after the Aug 24th patch. Anyone else been experiencing this issue? I submitted a bug report to Hello Games but haven't received any response.

[Orsum]

Yes, i have been experiencing something like this. for moments the game will just glitch or black screen then reappear a few seconds later. Its something in the coding of the game as a few weeks before i was not experiencing any issues like that.

[Moosefalva101]

It doesn't actually resolve itself for me after any amount of time. Screen stays black and the computer goes unresponsive and I am forced to reboot.

[Galm 1]

quick question, do your computer fans speed up when it blackscreens?

[Moosefalva101]

Yes, they do. Sounds like the PC is overheating, however, I checked the temps after one instance and it didn't seem to be out of line with regular usage temps.

[Galm 1]

I had the same issue with my 1080 in that case. Some people said to replace the thermal paste on the GPU, but I ended up just upgrading. Granted, the game still BSODS my computer after about 5 minutes of gameplay, so y'know.

[Moosefalva101]

For anyone that happens to stumble across this thread and is having this issue. I'm still having the same issue and received no assistance from Hello Games support. None of the latest updates have managed to fix it.

I did just now update the firmware of my GTX 1080 TI using the NVIDIA firmware check tool and tried the game once more. That actually got me into the new game intro, on planet, which is further than I'd been since the Beyond update rolled out. As soon as it handed control over to me, though, the screen blacked out as usual. Audio continued to roll. This time it didn't sound like the machine fans switched into overdrive upon signal loss, though.

I'm going to try a couple of different display port wires in the next few days and, if those don't make an impact, will probably try to run it via HDMI just to see if that makes any difference.

If anyone has seen this issue, resolved it themselves or heard anything from Hello about a similar issue, feel free to let me know.

[Sailex ™ カエルのスタン]

Hey did you by any chance find anything that helped, brother?

I have the same issue. Monitor loses signal after 2~ minutes.

[Galm 1]

I didn't one of the patches randomly fixed it for me.

[Moosefalva101]

I did get it running perfectly, actually. I’d previously tried everything from testing several other DisplayPort cables, to switching to using HDMI cables to taking out my Geforce 1080/8gb VRAM video card and putting in the Geforce 980ti/4gb VRAM that I’d been playing the game with when it launched. None of the above fixed it.

What did end up fixing it was manually adjusting the games config file to the lowest graphics settings and restarting the game. Looked like garbage on start up but ran perfectly. Once I got into the game and confirmed it was stable I began slowly increasing my graphics settings, starting with the resolution, and tested that the game would remain stable. Then I’d jump out of the game, save a copy of the config file as it was, and get back in and make additional changes. I kept doing that incrementally until I began to see the black screen issue again, either immediately after changing some settings or over relatively short amounts of playing time. Doing this, I was able to dial my game graphics in to a completely stable and decent looking set of settings and have been playing without issue from there.

Basically, what I think happened is twofold. Since the game originally launched I had upgraded my video card from a GF 980ti to a GF 1080 and, more importantly, my monitor from a 1080p native monitor to 2k native monitor.

Secondly, there were most likely changes that Hello Games made to the graphics options over time that caused substantially more memory to be required for certain settings. When I reinstalled the game and my Steam Cloud config file from my original, perfectly stable, install came over by default, the doubling of the native monitor resolution coupled with the fact that I had previously used very high settings to run the game at launch actually caused my 8gb of VRAM to be quickly overwhelmed by the new, more resource intensive needs of the updated game.

As far as solving the issue, I’d suggest the following process:

Turn off Steam Cloud saves for the game in the Steam client options, completely uninstall the game, delete the whole folder structure of “steam/steam apps/common/No Man’s Sky/” folder as well as the “’user’/AppData/Roaming/Hello Games/” folder in your Windows Explorer, reinstall the game and load it once until you’re either able to exit or it crashes. Then, search for the file “TKGRAPHICSSETTINGS.MXML” in Windows, open it with WordPad, change the ResolutionWidth value to “1280” and ResolutionHeight value to “720”, change any other settings that say “Ultra” or “High” to “Low”, change AnsiotropyLevel value to “0”, and change HDRMode value to “Off”.

Once those changes to the settings file are made and saved, restart the game and in the graphics settings change ONLY the resolution setting to whatever your monitor natively supports and try to play the game as normal. If it’s stable and you’re able to play with those settings, exit the game, make a copy of the “TKGRAPHICSSETTINGS.MXML” file and keep it on the desktop or someplace where you can quickly find it, then go back into the game and start to slowly increase the other graphics settings, playing for five or ten minutes between sets of changes to ensure stability. If it runs, exit the game, save a new copy of your settings file as a fall back, and then relaunch the game and make additional changes. Keep doing this until the game looks good and performs to your satisfaction and runs totally stable for at least twenty minutes of consecutive playtime or until you start to see the black screen or other crashes again. If the latter occurs, copy your backup of the settings file over the most recent settings file in the game folder and that should be your best possible setup for running the game.

Hope this works for you or anyone else having these black screen or crashing issues that happens to stumble across this. Let me know if it does. Sorry for the wall of text but it's definitely something that I wish Hello Games had taken the time to walk me through instead of totally ignoring my official support inquires. It's an awesome game that everyone should be able to play.