No matter how good your PC is, Hogwarts Legacy tends to have some pretty weird performance issues and bugs. Players have reported that Hogwarts Legacy has a tendency to crash on launch. The game either closes completely, or you just get a black screen, leaving players to wonder if there is a Hogwarts Legacy black screen on launch fix to get the game running again.
How to fix black screen on launch in Hogwarts Legacy
The biggest issue that often plagues players is the system requirements for a game. You need to make sure that your system at least meets the minimum requirements for the game before trying to run the game.
Waiting for loading
Hogwarts Legacy is a heavy game. Loading all the shaders of the game can take time. This is due to an optimization issue with Hogwarts Legacy. The game has to load all the shaders before it can properly launch.
The best thing you can try is to wait a bit before you move on to other possible fixes. The game might just be trying to load its shaders. This can take a few minutes depending on your storage speed.
WB will probably patch this issue pretty quickly, so don’t worry about having to wait half an hour before every session. If your black screen issue doesn’t resolve after waiting, you can try going to the next fixes.
Restart your PC
Again, Hogwarts Legacy is a heavy game and 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.
Try restarting your PC to see if it fixes the problem.
Update your drivers
The most basic issue that mostly causes launch issues is outdated drivers. Whether you are facing crashing issues or performance lagging, the first thing that you need to do is update your drivers, both for your GPU and Windows.
Open your GeForce Experience program or AMD Adrenaline program (depending on your GPU) and go to settings. Here check if you have the latest drivers installed or not. If not, install the drivers before you launch the game.
Next, go to your PC settings and check for Windows driver update. Make sure you have all the recommended and optional drivers installed and updated properly before trying to play Hogwarts Legacy again.
Launch Hogwarts Legacy as Admin
Launching Hogwarts Legacy as Admin will allow Hogwarts Legacy to get free access to all your PC resources. Right-click on your game icon and click on Launch as Administrator. If this resolves your issue, you can set your game to always launch as Admin by following 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 ‘Run this program as an administrator’ box
- Click on Apply and then OK.
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
Trying to launch a resource-intensive game in full-screen mode can often cause it to crash. You can turn off full-screen optimization to reduce the load on your PC and allow the game to launch smoothly.
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.
Check if Hogwarts Legacy is properly installed
You need to make sure that all the files required for Hogwarts Legacy are properly installed. Open your steam and go to Hogwarts legacy in your steam library.
Here, go into settings and verify the game files. This allows steam to check and verify if all the files are installed and in proper condition. If not, Steam will automatically download and install the missing or corrupted files.
If this doesn’t work, the last ditch effort that might help is to completely reinstall the game from scratch.
