How to fix black screen on startup in Hogwarts Legacy

The black screen bug just transcends Hogwarts Legacy but seemingly all games on PC. So, this Hogwarts Legacy black screen problem could occur for many possible reasons, so there may be just as many fixes. Let’s take a look at what these are; Here’s how to fix black screen on startup in Hogwarts Legacy.

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How to solve black screen problem in Hogwarts Legacy

Hogwarts Legacy tends to have performance issues and bugs on PC. Players have reported that Hogwarts Legacy can sometimes crash on launch or go to a black screen.

While it is passive, some have simply suggested that run the game on a black screen can fix the problem yourself. This is the simplest solution to try when encountering Hogwarts Legacy black screen. Some players have found that simply running Hogwarts Legacy for a few minutes (up to 20 minutes) during the black screen fixes the issue.

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However, if that fails, check out the solutions below.

Restart your PC and close background applications

Hogwarts Legacy is a big game, and no matter how powerful your PC is, you can crash out of nowhere. Perhaps the problem is that you need to make sure that all your resources are free for the game. If you’ve been using your PC for a while, some background processes might be messing up your game.

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This could also have something to do with the problem RAM allocation also since some background processes and games require a certain amount. Make sure you have enough for Hogwarts Legacy. You can do this from Task Manager before fully rebooting the PC.

Restart Steam

The very first thing you should do when you encounter the Hogwarts Legacy black screen error is to exit the game and restart Steam. If you had to close Steam, make sure it’s not running in the background. End the process completely from Task Manager.

After that, restart Steam and restart Hogwarts Legacy.

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Start Hogwarts Legacy as an administrator

When you start Hogwarts Legacy as an administrator, Hogwarts Legacy gets access to all your PC resources. Right-click your game icon and click Run as administrator. You can set your game to always start as admin with these steps:

• Open Local Files and look for the executable (.exe file)
• Right click and enter properties.
• Open the Compatibility tab
• Check the “Run this program as an administrator” box.
• Click Apply and then click OK.

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Update GPU driver

Outdated drivers are one of the most basic answers for crashes and black screens. You may need to update your drivers, both for your GPU and for Windows.

Both Nvidia and AMD regularly release new driver updates, especially with major game releases like Hogwarts Legacy.

Also check the Nvidia drivers by opening GeForce Experience on your PC or here on the Nvidia website. For example, Nvidia released driver version 528.9 on 2/8/23.

Here you can update the AMD drivers.

Disable all overlays

Overlays for different apps can be a big problem when launching your games. The first overlay you want to disable is the Steam overlay. You can do this by going into the Steam Settings and under the General Settings tab, make sure the “Enable Steam overlay in game” box is NOT ticked.

If you use other software like Discord or even MSI Afterburner, turn those overlays off as well.

Disable full screen optimization

You can disable full screen optimization to reduce the load on your PC and launch the game with fewer problems.

To turn off full screen optimization, do the following:

• Open Local Files and look for the executable file (.exe file for the game)
• Right click and enter properties.
• Open the Compatibility tab
• Check the Disable Full Screen Optimization box.
• Click Apply and then click OK.

That’s all we have so far of solutions to fix black screen on startup in Hogwarts Legacy. Check out more guides and solutions to questions about Hogwarts Legacy here.