black screen on startup

F

Fonzehh

Refugee
when i start my game the logo pops up and then goes to black screen. the only fix ive found is to restart and open the game before doing anything else. when i finaly do get in and either try to join a server or make my own it comes up with a bunch of errors and just sits at initializing. all my drivers are up to date, files verified. all that.

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View attachment output_log__2020-12-07__06-03-53.txt

 
UnauthorizedAccessException: Access to the path "D:\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\7 Days To Die\Data\Config\Localization.txt" is denied.




Make sure this file exists and is accessible with your user rights.

However i think not being able to load a localization shouldn't make the game unplayable. :D

 
I assure you it is there.
im not sure what else i can do besides whitelisting my entire steam folder from the AV program i run?

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I've heard whitelisting mentioned as a solution a few times. IF the virus scanner is the culprit its logfile should tell you that it prevented the access and why.

 
Fonzehh said:
im not sure what else i can do besides whitelisting my entire steam folder from the AV program i run?
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Turn off your AV-Software ENTIRELY. Try again. If it works then, your AV-Software is the problem.

Don't use bloatware like Norton Internet Security  and similar...

 
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Still have the error with localization.

Either the user account running the game has insufficient permissions, file access is blocked by security software, or the storage device the file is on is corrupted or failing.

These are basically the only things that would cause this type of issue, and security software is the cause 95% of the time.

 
uninstalled and reinstalled on a different hardrive. turned off all my security software. gave permission to my entire steam folder as well as the file. still nothing, black screen after startup logo. no idea what else i can do then if those are the only reasons for it. 

edit: on fresh restart, not doing anything else but starting up steam and the game it works. if i close out of the game and open it again, black screen.

 
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Are you using microsoft's junk GPU drivers forced onto you by windows updates once in a while or are you making sure that you're using the proper drivers provided by the manufacturers?

Also, the game file integrity checker isn't perfect, it is possible that it may have missed something during it's check. It's a very small chance, but it might be worth re-installing the game to see if anything changes (deleting user profiles in the process to ensure clean install).

 
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yes i am using drivers straight from nvidia. i have tried reinstalling after deleting profiles and stuff. possibly didnt delete EVERYTHING?  ill try that again

 
Fonzehh said:
yes i am using drivers straight from nvidia. i have tried reinstalling after deleting profiles and stuff. possibly didnt delete EVERYTHING?  ill try that again
Click to expand...
Are you able to run other games that are resource demanding... more specifically ram demanding? Or you could run a free memtest86 to see if your ram is error free. Ram can do all kinds of unusual things when it comes to games, though usually they're a bit more random then this. But me being mainly a hardware troubleshooting guy, it's all I got. Maybe you bought new hardware recently that might not have been fully tested to be stable yet?

I'm also curious to know why your output log shows less errors than that screenshot you took. According to the screenshot, it's an access denied error. This could mean a lot of things. Since firewall / AV has pretty much been ruled out, ram could cause information not being delivered to the CPU, if you're using an old HDD, maybe that could cause that since no one uses HDDs for this game anymore as the performance / load times are insane now, so maybe the insanely slow loading time is causing read errors? This could be a user / admin rights kind of issue which I think you also ruled out already, besides, that's an unlikely issue anyway. I do assume you're not running a potato machine for this game as that would be rather rude to waste our time like that. Aside from all the mentioned, I don't know what else it could be. 

 
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i only run SSD's and machine is certainly nowhere near potato status. a few months ago the game ran fine with no issues, had not played it for a bit then when i tried to run it again this happend.
I really do appreciate all the help so far as well

 
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Here a few things you can try to get more information:

1) Check all the enclosing directories as well. Are they all readable by anyone?

2) Edit Localization.txt. Can you add a space somewhere?

3) Delete Localization.txt and start the game. What is the error message in the logfile now? (Afterwards make a steam validate so it replaces the file).

4) With the normal explorer or with the command shell copy the whole game directory into a newly created dir (preferably) on your c drive and execute 7d_launcher.exe in that new dir (after having started steam but without using steam to do anything)

EDIT: Jugginators post was the spark for experiment 4a:

4a) Move the game directory you already copied to c  into c:\Program Files (sp)  and check if it changes anything. If some virus scanner is still stealthyly preventing access it may be more forgiving if the stuff resides in the usual place for programs. But I'm not an expert on windows and virus scanners, not sure if this really makes a difference.

 
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Something seems to be off with permissions to be honest if you've eliminated hardware as an issue. Ensure you have read/write/execute access, which is what Meganoth is getting at. Can also disable Windows firewall/defender, and don't forget that most 3rd party AVs will still run even though you told them to not run, so realllly make sure they aren't running.

 
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