NFS: Hot Pursuit - Black Screen on Launch / Game Breaks After Reboot

[tingclair]

Hi everyone!

I've got a fairly common problem from what I've seen - NFS Hot Pursuit (2010) doesn't launch and sits there at a black screen, waiting for me to kill the task in Windows. There is no doubt in my mind that the issue is related to ATI/AMD display drivers after trying nearly every other fix under the sun. While I don't have the problem completely nailed down yet, I hope this helps someone. Before I list out what I've done, here are the specs on my machine:

Windows 7 64-bit, 8 GB RAM
ATI Radeon HD 5700 video card
Dual screen DVI monitors

Check out this weirdness:

FYI, NFS Hot Pursuit installed, game files verified, patched to latest version:

1) Game won't launch - black screen on startup.
2) Killed NFS11.exe task in Windows
3) Re-installed AMD display drivers (No reboot)
4) Game launches properly after this - and works as many times as I launch and close it.
5) Once I reboot the machine - the black screen issue comes back

Re-installing display drivers ALWAYS works for the current session of Windows and always breaks after a reboot/logout. Something is happening on shutdown or boot-up to break this and I'm not sure what it is exactly. This "fix" always works regardless of AMD driver version. I have tried everything from 12.4 to the current 13.9.

OTHER STUFF I HAVE TRIED

Here are the other steps I've tried so far (WITHOUT success) - If you have the same problem, no doubt you have tried many of these fixes before:

1) Delete Steam game files and re-download

2) Verify game files, reboot and then try again

3) Run NFS11.exe (outside of Steam) as an Administrator, or with Compatibility settings

4) Set affinity of NFS11.exe process in Windows task manager to CPU0 and CPU1 only (to hopefully get around multi-core CPU issue

5) Actually downloaded Origin (the EA gaming platform) and ran into the same problems there, so Steam itself doesn't appear to be the problem

6) Uninstalled Steam, reinstalled, and restored commonapps folder. Steam appeared to go through the .NET and DirectX steps before first launch, and the game worked properly on first launch. Also worked as many times as I launched it during that Windows session. As soon as I rebooted the machine and tried again, it launched with the black screen and broke again.

[Neo]

You ever get this problem fixed? I have a friend that tries to install a modpack for this game and the same thing happens to there game, they get a black screen and game crashes pretty much. Thanks for any suggestions.

[John Blue]

This game is a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ virus.