[Windows 10] Black screen on startup

[GiltosMx]

I bought this game, and ever since I hadn't been able to run it in my "gaming" computer. My computer is a Lenovo Y50, with an Intel HD Graphics 4600 (which apparently has had A LOT of issues with gaming being reported) and a dedicated NVIDIA GTX 960M card.

I've seen a lot of people with open threads where they were getting the same back/white/pink screen when booting up the game, and no real resolution/answers were provided.

I always booted up the game and could hear the waves and the music, but the screen turned white and the application stopped working. I tried everything in other threads in this support forum, and nothing worked. Some of the things I tried - in case they solve anyone else's problem - were:

• Checking game's file integrity
  
• Reinstalling the game
  
• Going into the NVIDIA control panel and explicitly telling Obra Dinn to run with the dedicated NVIDIA card
  
• Going into Windows 10 Settings -> Sytem -> Screen -> Graphics Configuration and in there, explicitly telling Obra Dinn to use the "High Performance" graphics when running it
  
• Trying to update my graphics drivers (they were up to date, and the game kept crashing for months, with different versions of drivers.)
  
• There was mention that the RivaTuner application might be causing problems. Tried running the game with the app uninstalled/closed and the game still crashed.
  
• There was no log file in the /steamapps/common/ObraDinn/ObraDinn_Data folder as reported by other users. I was unable to debug the issue.

Nothing! I was stumped. It was only made worse by the fact that my older work laptop which only had an integrated Intel HD Graphics card was able to run Obra Dinn with no problems.

In the end, it was a problem with having TWO graphic cards. One for "low power consumption" (in this case the Intel HD Graphics 4600) and one for "high fidelity" (in this case, GTX 960M).

The fix is not "ideal" and may not work for everyone, but I had to completely disable my Intel HD Graphics card and boot up the game - WHILE the integrated card was disabled - for it to work. These are more detailed steps:

1. Go to the "Device Manager" (You can do that by typing Device Manager in the windows menu search bar)
   
2. Expand the "Screen adapters" section
   
3. Right-click on the Intel HD Graphics adapter
   
4. Click on "Disable device" and confim the "This device might stop working if you disable it" dialog.

I'm not sure what will happen in different computers, but for me, the screen went black after I disabled the Intel device. I suspended the laptop and woke it up again.

When the laptop resumed from sleep, it was using a "Microsoft generic graphic adapter" of sorts as a fallback, and some things were not working "perfect". Some examples:

• I was unable to adjust the screen brightness or resolution
  
• I was unable to connect the laptop to an external display (monitor, TV)

Other than those two things, the laptop worked perfectly fine. I decided to try booting Obra Dinn while the computer was in that "fallback graphic card" state.

Voila! The game started immediately, correctly using the NVDIA card, and even showing my RivaTuner OSD stats (further confirming this was not the problem).

All in all, it might not be the best solution, but it's the only one I've found (specially in this Lenovo Y50 model).

Intel has just released newer graphics drivers for the Intel HD Graphics 4600 card, but they're not compatible for my particular Lenovo computer. This might be the case for other manufacturers as ASUS or Alienware.

When you’re done playing, you can re-enable the Intel HD Graphics inside the “Device manager”.

Hope this thread helps someone else. If you're running into issues, feel free to post a reply and I'll try to help - and possibly make this thread a "troubleshooting Return of the Obra Dinn" thread.