How to fix the black screen on launch in Hogwarts Legacy

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The black screen bug transcends simply Hogwarts Legacy, but all games seemingly on PC. This black screen issue for Hogwarts Legacy could therefore crop up through many potential reasons, so there’s potentially just as many fixes. Let’s take a look at what these are; here how to fix the black screen on launch in Hogwarts Legacy.

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How to solve the black screen issue 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 black screen.

Whilst it’s passive, some has simply suggested that letting the game run on a black screen may repair the issue itself. This is the easiest fix to try when encountering the Hogwarts Legacy black screen glitch. Some players have found that simply letting Hogwarts Legacy run during the black screen for a few minutes (up to 20 minutes) fixes the issue.

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However, failing this, check out the following solutions.

Restart your PC and closing 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 all your resources are free for the game to use. If you have been using your PC for a while, some background processes might be messing with your game.

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On this, the issue may also have something to do with RAM allocation too, as some background processes and games might need a certain amount. Make sure you have enough for Hogwarts Legacy. You can do this through Task Manager, before restarting the PC entirely.

Restart Steam

The very first thing you should do if you’re running into the Hogwarts Legacy black screen bug is to exit the game and restart Steam. If you had to close Steam, go ahead and make sure it’s not running in the background. End the process completely via Task Manager. 

With that done, restart Steam and relaunch Hogwarts Legacy. 

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Launch Hogwarts Legacy as Admin

Launching Hogwarts Legacy as Admin will allow Hogwarts Legacy to get access to all your PC resources. Right-click on your game icon and click on Launch as Administrator. You can set your game to always launch as Admin through these steps:

• Open Local Files and look for the executable file (.exe file)
• Right Click and enter properties.
• Open the Compatibility Tab
• Check the ‘Run this program as an administrator’ box
• Click on Apply and then OK.

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Update GPU Drivers

Outdated drivers is one of the most basic answers for crashing and black screens. You might need to update your drivers, both for your GPU and Windows.

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

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

You can go here to update AMD drivers. 

Disable all overlays

Overlays for various apps can be a huge 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 setting tab, make sure that the ‘Enable the Steam Overlay while in-game’ box is NOT ticked.

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

Disable Full-Screen Optimization

You can turn off full-screen optimization to reduce the load on your PC and allow the game to launch with less trouble.

To disable full-screen optimization, follow these steps:

• 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 fullscreen optimizations’ box
• Click on Apply and then OK.

That’s all we have in terms of solutions so far for how to fix the black screen on launch in Hogwarts Legacy. Check out more of our guides and solutions for Hogwarts Legacy related queries here.

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