Black Screen on Shades of Darkness

[sparhawk1888]

I purchased the Shades of Darkness addon in December of 2013. Unfortunately I had a work related injury right afterward and after having both knees replaced I was finally ready to play the addon. I started the campaign, traveled up the stairs in the first act and suddenly the screen went black. I tried to adjust the video settings but nothing fixed the problem. I then did a search on the internet only to find out this is an ongoing issue with the addon. I have an MSI laptop with the Intel i7-3610QM CPU with an Nvidia GTX-670M with 3 GB of GDDR5 memory. I have tried all of the fixes noted in different forums to no avail. The original campaigns all work fine, and the beginning of the Shades campaign work fine. The bizarre thing is that if I go back down the stairs, change the video resolution to my native resolution of 1920X1080 the screen will go back to normal. Once I go back up the stairs nothing I do will work unfortunately.

I have been a big fan of the Heroes games since the original Heroes 1 and have never had this problem with any of them. I am a Systems Analyst so I do know my way around computers and have to say I have never seen a glitch like this. Apparently there is a warning now that the addon will not work on laptops. I did not see that warning when I originally purchased the addon. I would prefer to have the problem resolved as I would love to play the new characters. Failing that is there anything that can be done for me? Thank you in advance for your assistance in this matter.

[5M0k1N]

you should explain what fixes you tried so we dont tell you to do them again :p

you probably found these already but oh well

"Right click on the desktop select NVidia Control Center. Then go to Manage 3D settings, then in Program Settings find Might and Magic: Heroes VI (if you can't find it, then add it). Then Under CUDA - GPUs select Use these GPUs and select your graphic card. It should now say CUDE- GPUs All.

Of course this is only for Nvidia graphic cards. And also note that this won't fix the problem overall, but it will reduce battle crashes (black screen) by 70%.

Also note that the first mission of the dark elf campaign is the clusterf**k of the battle crashes. It has something to do with heaven creatures fights. But after that 1st mission, there will be a lot fewer crashes"

from http://forums.ubi.com/showthread.php/769279-Black-screen-in-battle%28Might-amp-Magic-Heroes-VI-Shades-of-Darkness%29-Forums


2 posts from http://heroescommunity.com/viewthread.php3?TID=38948

"Just a quick update on my experience with the black screen (with audio) when entering a battle. One of the suggestions on the official forum was to adjust some settings in the NVidia control panel, which I did, and it seemed to remedy the issue. I've played for some hours now after and no blackness yet.
The NVidia control panel fix I'm referring to is the one where you create a new profile/setting for Heroes VI specifically."

"A 'sometimes' work around for the Black Screen. Stumbled on this by accident. Wait for awhile and then press enter or Spacebar. Sometimes this kicks it into gear, and will allow you to continue. Mostly when you load saved games. May have to be very patient. Also for black screens with fights, it sometimes works as well. "

good luck :p

edit: also found this "Put this new key on the register
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\GraphicsDrivers]
"tdrLevel"=dword:00000000"
http://www.gamefaqs.com/pc/605242-might-and-magic-heroes-vi/answers/293203-black-screen

[sparhawk1888]

Thanks for the reply. Yes I should have mentioned the fixes. I have tried the Nvidia control panel fixes (The Cuda "All", Single Display, Max performance for power management), I have deleted the profiledata file, I have changed compatibility to both Win 7 and Win XP, and I have added the reg file that is referenced above. Unfortunately none of them worked. I will try the space bar/enter key mentioned and will update when I get the chance a bit later today. There was a file referenced on a couple of different sites at the following site "http://www.mediafire.com/?1oaqlpnqq9fvxzv". The file has been taken down and they don't mention in the forums what the file was supposed to do. It came from the Ubi forum so I had high hopes until I tried the link and found it was gone.

I have to say in all of the years I have been around computers (since 1982... yeah I'm that old :) )I have never seen a glitch like this that will only happen at certain places on the map. Why it fixes in the underground area only to glitch again when I go back upstairs is bizarre.

Again thank you for your reply.

[easterngames]

Older versions of the nvidia drivers do not cause black screens. Not sure how far back it was i had use when i played the game, but its a few years ago. I think it was before version 320. I will see if i can find out what version works,