Black Screen During Gameplay/ ARMA 2 OA

[nobullets 10]

If any1 can help me out there, this is getting frustrating. I got the game yesterday and was all excited. Installed and load up just fine, but after about 10-15 minutes into the game and it doesnt matter if im paying single mission or campaign, the screen goes black. I can still hear myself shooting and moving but can't see anything than a black screen. I never have any issues like this with other games at all.

My specs:

Windows Vista 64bit

Intel Core 2 Duo 3.2 gig

4 gig ram

Nvidia GTX 280 (with latest driver)

Edited July 6, 2010 by nobullets

[ProfTournesol 956]

Yeah, it happens to me too. One solution (working most of the time) :

- alt tab to go back to desktop ;

- go back to OA and type the cheat code to empty the video memory : left shift simultaneously with numpad minus, then type FLUSH.

It doesn't happen in ArmA2, so we must be patient until BI optimize OA as much as ArmA2 is optimized.

[Flash Thunder 10]

Did you get a message saying

"Display Drivers have stopped responding and have restored"?

I have gotten this 3 times since I've installed OA

and I have to force shut down OA.

GPU: Nvidia 9800gtx

[MavericK96 0]

I've gotten the driver death several times in OA now. Not sure why it happens there but not in ArmA2.

[nobullets 10]

Did you get a message saying

"Display Drivers have stopped responding and have restored"?

I have gotten this 3 times since I've installed OA

and I have to force shut down OA.

GPU: Nvidia 9800gtx

Yeah I forgot to mention, I do get this message when I'm forced to go to desktop, and yes, same here I would have to shut down OA completely. This really suks not being able to play consistanly at all.

[cashxx 10]

Didn't happen to me with Arma but Arma 2 and Operation Arrowhead it does.

Sometimes I can play for 10 minutes and other times I can play for 4 hours. I have tried every fix possible.

Everyone kept saying its your hardware, but I have replaced every pc component and its still happening and only with Arma 2. Its something with the game, but not sure what.

[MavericK96 0]

It's not the hardware. I get the driver death sometimes within like 5 minutes of just looking around in the editor with no other units present. It seems to happen more often when I turn sharply or change views (from a scope to normal, or vice-versa for example). No crashlogs because the game itself doesn't crash, so I'm not sure what's causing the issue.

[cashxx 10]

In your logs you should have errors for your video card. For nvidia it says about it stop responding or something like that. I bought an ATI card to test and it had another error, but basically doing the same thing.

[MavericK96 0]

I've created a CIT ticket for those wanting to provide more information to help get this issue fixed.

http://dev-heaven.net/issues/11742

[Michael Withstand 10]

A temporary fix would be to Alt-Enter out of game then Alt-Enter back. so you don't need to quit the game. Happens to me too with ArmA 2 from time to time and it's annoying but Alt-Enter works.

And I believe this problem is only happening with NVIDIA GPUs but cash mentioned it's also happening with ATI cards. I really hope this problem will be fixed in ArmA 2 and OA.

Edited July 6, 2010 by Michael Withstand

[MavericK96 0]

A temporary fix would be to Alt-Enter out of game then Alt-Enter back. so you don't need to quit the game. Happens to me too with ArmA 2 from time to time and it's annoying but Alt-Enter works.

And I believe this problem is only happening with NVIDIA GPUs but cash mentioned it's also happening with ATI cards. I really hope this problem will be fixed in ArmA 2 and OA.

Alt-Enter makes it so I don't have to reboot, but it seems like after the driver dies, SLI stops working or something, because I get terrible performance in OA until I reboot or disable/re-enable SLI.

[joker68 11]

Just for the record: I'm having this issue in ARMA2 as well. Using latest nvidia drivers with my 9800GTX+ 512Mb, everything in NORMAL (video). Since I'm playing in 1920x1080, I plan to buy another card (HD5850?) to replace my 9800, but as far as I know, the problem isn't hardware related.

[Placebo 29]

Running the latest beta patches for both OA and A2?

[MavericK96 0]

Latest beta patches here, though OA 1.52 from Steam does the same thing. I also have confirmed that this is not overclock/hardware related GPU-wise, as both overclock and stock speeds have the problem for me. I never had this issue prior to OA's release, so I'm not sure what is going on.

[cashxx 10]

Latest beta patches here, though OA 1.52 from Steam does the same thing. I also have confirmed that this is not overclock/hardware related GPU-wise, as both overclock and stock speeds have the problem for me. I never had this issue prior to OA's release, so I'm not sure what is going on.

Ditto............been putting up with this since the release of Arma 2 so get used to it. Doesn't look like a fix is near.

[MavericK96 0]

Oddly enough, I never had this problem until OA came along.

Anyway, I need more feedback and testing from others with this issue, but it seems like the new OA beta build 71952 might improve the issue, as I was able to get through Laser Show with no driver crash. Could just be a placebo or a coincidence, but if others could test and report back here and in the CIT that would be great.

[cashxx 10]

I don't think we will ever see a fix. I have been having it since the release of Arma 2. Reported it and now I see its expired and not assigned to anyone. It would give me the BSOD on my machine but that stopped and now I have just been getting the driver failing and black screen. It was assigned to dwarden, so hopefully if the issue keeps coming up they will try and fix it. I see dwarden has been assigned to your bug report too. I voted for it and posted a comment.

I kept having placebo and other say its my hardware, but I have replaced all the hardware and rebuilt the machine from scratch so its not hardware. Between this and the stuttering the game is almost unplayable, I might not buy the next one, which I hate to not do because I like supporting the game, but if I can't play it then what the hell.

My expired bug report:

http://dev-heaven.net/issues/2360

[L3TUC3 32]

I've got this problem too. It seems that the video drivers crash and restart, but I don't know exactly why.

Luckily the LSHift + numpad - flush command recovers the game quite nicely.

I think in my case it's heat related as it's pretty hot weather lately. That or I still haven't gotten my RAM to run quite stable yet (ArmA takes a pretty long time to load compared to my old system).

AMD Phenom II X4 955 3.2Ghz

4GB DDR3 1333mhz

Sapphire ATI HD5850 2GB

[MavericK96 0]

Those of you with nVidia cards, try the new WHQL-candidate 258.96 drivers here. They seem to help prevent the issue for me, though I've only run through one whole mission as a test, but I tried the same mission before with older drivers and had the driver die almost immediately, so this is promising.

[paelleon 0]

I have to reinstall ArmA2 and OA recently since I installed an SSD (and put ArmA2 into it). I applied the latest patch 1.59 and... wonders! Here is the black screen problem I never had since now!!!

My Nvidia drivers are version 258.96.

[Troubl 10]

Been playing Arma 2 since it's release. Have BAF, CO, PMC, and forget what else. I've never had the Black Screen problem until the 1.59 patch. My specs:

Windows Vista Home Premium Service Pack 2

Intel Core2 Quad Q6600 2.40GHz

3 GB RAM

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260

Again, have never had the black screen problem until I downloaded and installed the 1.59 patch a few days ago. Don't know if it's related, but seems fishy.

[StickMan25 10]

I too would have to say that the latest update (v1.59) makes this occur; were the sound remains but screen is black. Im running GTX280. It's ArmA's only flaw now and I fear with ArmA III announced this will be on the back burner, if fixed at all! I have almost 600 hours on Steam playing this game with all the DLC as well and only now dose the game do this.

I have a feeling most crap programmers/developer (That's what BIS is just cracker jack programmers!) they fixes some issues but then brake other things. Hope on ArmA III they don't get ahead of themselves and we end up with million updates/beta patches.

While the many patches show they are willing to work to fix things I feel it more shows their inability to get it right! Because as it sits right now the game un-playable, as you don't know when (5 mins or 4 hours) it will leave you F#@ked. Now I got 10's if not 100's of hours making mission that are now no good.

I'll wait (maybe never) to buy ArmA III to see how many errors and bugs it has or if the community reports crucial errors like these before investing again with some cracker jack game developer!