Stuck in loading screen

[fzurita]

Issue Type (Required):

Stuck on Loading Screen

Issue Description (Required):

Hello, when I start the game, I seem to be stuck in the loading screen. I see that Darktide.exe is running in the task manager. The screen in the game is all black except for a skull at the bottom right. It seems like a video is playing though since I hear audio but it’s very stuttery. I let it sit there for about 10 minutes and it stays in that screen very slowly playing stuttery audio.

Eventually I just quit the game by using Alt+F4 since nothing is happening.

My hunch is that it’s related to the video playback not working correctly, but I can’t say for sure. This is a fairly new system with a 9950x3d CPU and a RTX 5090 GPU.

[PC] Do You Use Mods? (Optional):

No, I don’t use mods

Reproduction Rate (Required):

Constant (100%)

Platform (Required):

PC - Steam

Player ID (Optional):

Steam Community :: Saphiram

[PC] Upload Console Log & darktide_launcher.log (Optional):

console-2025-03-30-22.20.49-1a78947b-bc8e-4d54-bedc-40155887bedf.log (72.3 KB)

[fzurita]

Also, I have a tried a few things:

Like setting the number of worker threads to 6.

Deleting all darktide settings in the AppData folder.

Verifying files from steam and from the launcher.

Adding an inbound and outbound firewall rule to the windows defender firewall that allows all connections to Darktide.exe.

[FatsharkJulia]

Hi! Issues like this (black screen, some UI elements appearing) can usually be resolved with a driver re-installation. Please see:

https://support.fatshark.se/hc/en-us/articles/360021233554--PC-How-to-Perform-a-Clean-Re-Installation-of-Your-NVIDIA-GPU-Drivers

[fzurita]

Hi, I performed those steps as described, downloaded the nvidia driver installation package, went to advanced during the installation, and chose a clean install. I rebooted and immediately tried the launch the game. There was no change in the behavior of the game.

It maybe related to the video playback. At least that’s what it appears like in the console logs.

By the way, I have done stress testing on my build, both CPU and GPU and I have detected no issues. Other games have no issues as well so far.

I uploaded a screenshot of the screen where I’m stuck. I reduced all settings to as low as possible as well.

[fzurita]

Ok, I did some further investigation because this was bothering me. I just noticed that thousands and thousands of some kind of dump file is being created by the Nvidia driver in this folder. It’s approaching a few Gigabytes now.

I have attached one of the dumps here.

sl-sha-c5741e7b.dmp (5.6 MB)

I’m using NVidia Driver version:

This is probably useful, a stack trace of the dump retrieved using WinDbg.

I opened several of the files and they all look the same. I’m surprised it’s trying to do anything with AMD Fidelity FX given that I don’t have an AMD GPU installed on my system and I disabled the iGPU on my CPU.

I also disabled AMD FSR features, the dump still looks the same.

I did a quick experiment of swapping the amd_fidelity_fx_dx12.dll file with the one from the latest SDK. It did change the stack trace, but it didn’t fix the crash:

It does provide an extra clue:
gameoverlayrenderer64.dll is in the mix now.

I have the steam overlay disabled though. Not sure how it could still be intercepting calls.

[fzurita]

Well… The game started working after I disabled MSI Afterburner, MSI Center, and Discord.

So it was one of those three that must had been doing it.

[MeatShield01]

I use MSI Afterburner and Discord every time I play.

MSI Center is bloated trash.

[fzurita]

It turned out to be none of the above…

I forgot I had also disabled the NVidia overlay.

Turn Nvidia overlay on = can’t boot the game
Turn Nvidia overlay off = I can boot the game.

[FatsharkJulia]

Sorry I missed your earlier response. It’s interesting to learn that the NVIDIA overlay is causing this - I’ll see if we can reach out to our contacts over there.