FIX FOR BLACKSCREEN AND STARTUP CRASHES!!!

[LootDude]

I was spending hours on this, no common solution worked but this fixed it. My game just started with a blackscreen and then quitted without an error message..

To make the game run again, you first need to :

1. Open localappdata, for easiness, just type %localappdata% into windows search and open that folder. Then look for the Hogwarts Legacy folder, delete the whole thing.

IF YOU DON'T HAVE CLOUDSAVES ACTIVATED, MAKE A BACKUP OF YOUR SAVEGAMES FROM INSIDE THAT FOLDER TO YOUR DESKTOP!!!

(To me it occured, that I could get past the blackscreen now, but then the game crashed after loading shaders for a few seconds every time... )

2. Go to C:/PROGRAMDATA/HOGWARTSLEGACY and delete all the files in it!

(These are the shader files. My guess is, that these are the shader files from the older update and that the game tries to read these first. Because they are from another game version, this may cause the game to crash instantly, instead of overwriting them at all...)

HOPE THIS WORKS FOR YA'LL !!!

[cheesecheese56]

I just tested this method, and it did not work for me -- got to the shader compilation screen, and it crashed (no warning?) about 1/4 through.

[Edit 1 ] I ran disk cleanup and cleared my DirectX Shader cache after the above crash, and the game loaded. The reason I have low confidence is that in the past, the game has randomly worked and crashed. So this Dx cache wipe may be an additional required step.

[Edit 2] I quite the game and ran it. I immediately got the 'out of memory' errors -- I believe this is an artifact of an overzealous Denuvo blowing up the game. This happened 2x. On the third time, the game loaded perfectly, 100%. Although I don't think this resolves the stupid 'out of memory' BS from DRM, I do think they might've resolved the shader crash, if you also clear your shaders.

I don't want to keep performing QA, so I won't update this post further, but I hope this helps someone else.

[LootDude]

Originally posted by cheesecheese56:

I just tested this method, and it did not work for me -- got to the shader compilation screen, and it crashed (no warning?) about 1/4 through.

[Edit 1 ] I ran disk cleanup and cleared my DirectX Shader cache after the above crash, and the game loaded. The reason I have low confidence is that in the past, the game has randomly worked and crashed. So this Dx cache wipe may be an additional required step.

[Edit 2] I quite the game and ran it. I immediately got the 'out of memory' errors -- I believe this is an artifact of an overzealous Denuvo blowing up the game. This happened 2x. On the third time, the game loaded perfectly, 100%. Although I don't think this resolves the stupid 'out of memory' BS from DRM, I do think they might've resolved the shader crash, if you also clear your shaders.

I don't want to keep performing QA, so I won't update this post further, but I hope this helps someone else.

Well, I'm glad that this helped you in a way and that you found an additional step by clearing the DirectX shader cache. I did this, too. But it was days before I did all the steps I described above, so I didn't think it was worth mentioning.
Yes, Denuvo really sucks... But I never had problems with these out of memory errors. It is really helpful to have 32GB of RAM to fix that error, at least that is what I read in some posts. I got 32GB, maybe that's why I didn't get this error.

[Nym™]

Also remove the UE4SS-RE (XInput) script loader and any mods that make use of it IF you are using mods. This is what made my game run smooth, load faster and my cpu fan doesn't ramp up to 100 all the time.

[LootDude]

Originally posted by Nym™:

Also remove the UE4SS-RE (XInput) script loader and any mods that make use of it IF you are using mods. This is what made my game run smooth, load faster and my cpu fan doesn't ramp up to 100 all the time.

For me it still works with the Alohomora Mod, no issues so far.