Black screen freeze

[DarkDragon1979]

Hey all, was wondering if I could get some help with an issue I have been experiencing since reinstalling Neverwinter Nights 2 and wanting to return to the Sword Coast for some RPing. My screen randomly has been going black, sometimes on transitioning locations, sometimes 5 or 10 minutes into the game. I hear the music still playing but nothing on screen and can't alt+tab out, totally frozen, have to hit reset on pc. I have been searching for days now trying so many different things to no avail. A year ago when I was playing regularly, it ran flawlessly...I am at a loss. Messing around with settings, video card, drivers, DirectX, sound, of course client extension...blah blah blah many other things. Please, for the love of Gond, someone tell me what in the 9 hells is going on. Thanks.

[Tsidkenu]

Win10, probably. I have been getting the same thing on rare occasions, and not always when playing NWN2. Couldn't tell you how to fix it though.

[Blackhorizon]

When the black screen happens, press windows key + p then arrow up or down a few times and enter. If nothing happens try again.

Basically windows (10) has created a virtual screen that you cannot see. Using the project menu will allow you to switch your screen without resorting to unnecessary forced reboot.

Has happened to me. For a while more frequently. Not that often anymore but never know when it comes for a visit.

[DarkDragon1979]

I'm sorry, I should have mentioned it is Windows 7 64bit and this is the only game that has this problem.

[NeonAvenger]

Are you using the client extension?
I used to have that happen occasionally but it vanished when I started using the extension... if you are then I have no clue.

[DarkDragon1979]

Yup, I'm using the client extension. At this point in time the game is unplayable until I figure this out. It used to work perfectly.

[Blackhorizon]

Are you able to bring up task manager with ctrl+alt+del (once)? If you can then you can end the game process from there.

Are you running the game in fullscreen mode?

If so then go to your Documents > Neverwinter Nights 2 folder and find a file called nwn2.ini. Open it with notepad and scroll down to [Display Options]. Change FullScreen=1 to FullScreen=0 then save. Does this help?

[DarkDragon1979]

It isn't possible to ctrl+alt+del once it freezes, which makes it worse. I have to restart my pc from the power button. I tried running in windowed mode also and still same thing. Thanks for the replies, but this problem still exists. I hope to try to solve this on the weekend. The patience for random pc freezes just isn't there right now to focus on the problem.

[chad878262]

Is it possible to go back to a previous version when it worked? If it's recent then it's possible a Windows update is not compatible/causing issues and going back to a system restore point might help.

[Maecius]

Is your graphics card's drivers up to date? I think there are a few graphics cards out there that just don't agree with NWN2 out of the box.

https://www.howtogeek.com/135976/how-to ... rformance/

[Blackrose]

Try Alt Tab, minimize the game and go back to it.

I had this issue back in 2012 with Windows XP.

[Nemni]

Try this guide: http://www.askvg.com/kill-all-not-respo ... -shortcut/
Works for me

[DarkDragon1979]

My restore points don't go back very far and I haven't had NWN2 installed for the past year or so, but yes I still tried to no avail. All drivers are up to date. I can alt+tab in and out fine before the freeze occurs, freeze hits I can't do anything but reset with the power button. I don't receive any "This program is not responding message" because it just completely freezes randomly, but I am willing to try anything at this point.

[chad878262]

If your video card driver was recently updated, maybe that's the culprit. Could be going backward to a previous version of the driver might help. As Maecius indicated, some drivers don't play nice with NWN2.

[Nemni]

I can alt+tab in and out fine before the freeze occurs, freeze hits I can't do anything but reset with the power button.

When similar freezes happen to me I can't do anything but access the windows task bar by pressing the windows key. Everything else is unresponsive, including task manager. That's why I use a shortcut directly there to shut down unresponsive programs. But maybe our crashes aren't identical.