Stellaris Goes Black/White Screen on Launch

[Sneakytiki]

Hi Everyone,

For some reason, pretty sure it is because of the new launcher, new paradox games will not start. Old ones start fine, every other steam game works fine, every other steam game with mods works fine.

This is a fresh/new install on a new computer. I thought it was a botched SSD drive at first, reinstall did nothing, format of drive and reinstall did not work, verifying game files did not work, disabling of mods and addons did not work.

Things I have noticed are the new launcher will not install 2 or 3 files like on my old computer, not sure if this is an issue. Why switch to something like this, it has issues. It will open the launcher, then the stellaris box loads, then it acts as if it is loading for awhile, it should move quickly. When I click the mouse, it goes to a white or black screen, click again and it says it is not responding, wait or force close and followed by error reporting.

This is running on a laptop:

Intel i7-9750H 2.60 Ghz
32 GB RAM
Intel UHD Graphics 630
nVidia Geforce RTX 2070 - 8GB
1 TB Samsung SSD
1 TB Samsung 970 EVO
2 TB Seagate SSHD

Latest drivers are installed, currently updating windows. The problem acts like files are missing, it is behaving like using an unsupported mod would for a game update, only other time I have experienced an issue like this. Files are validated and reinstalled twice, all mods disabled.

Thank you for any suggestions!

 

[Sneakytiki]

Odd, all the new paradox games are missing "d3d9.dll" copied from system32 to the main game folder and they work again. Reminds me of an issue with Fallout 4 and script extender and other mods and weirdness but those required direct install into the root folder while stellaris separates everything.

No idea what caused the issue, the steam account was transferred from another older computer and it kept all the same settings. I have not played stellaris since last spring due to work/military/school and was not sure of what happened.

So not the launcher? I'm not sure, hopefully it works well with the mods, nice to see some 64 bit updates!

 

[AndrewT]

Odd, all the new paradox games are missing "d3d9.dll" copied from system32 to the main game folder and they work again.

That's not at all normal - we'd know if everyone saw that!

Maybe a dx9 or system path issue?

 

[Sneakytiki]

I'm not sure, new computer, its installed on an SSD separate from the SSD that Windows is on. I have never seen it before and I have always installed games on a different drive. The only difference I noticed was that during the initial startup, nothing else installed. Usually when I start a new game on steam, especially if its the first start of any game, steam will work to install a few things before starting the game. It could be something that MSI had set up on the laptop preinstalled. I did install two additional drives when I got the machine, maybe something there. What was weird is it still did it after the second reformat and setup with disk management.

I was multitasking trying to undo some damage from a Killer wireless card deciding what app got the most internet, so who knows, I could've clicked something randomly. It was only HOI3, EU4 and Stellaris. CK2 worked fine, I did not try Imperator yet. All the games Paradox publishes for other developers worked fine.

 

[lukeloh]

Hi, I want to confirm that I have the same problem and manually copying d3d9.dll to the program folder resolved the issue. Thank you Sneakytiki.

Edit: Prior to this, I also completely reinstalled Stellaris, removed all mods, reinstalled gfx drivers etc without success.

Edit2: Running steam.exe as Administrator as recommended in the other threads allows the game to load, however it crashes once the loading is complete and reaches the Main Screen (where you select New Game) etc. Same thing also happens on HOI4. So copying d3d9.dll to the program folder is the only way (for me) to get the games working from the new launcher.

 

[Samandri]

Odd, all the new paradox games are missing "d3d9.dll" copied from system32 to the main game folder and they work again.

Been having problems with Stellaris all day and this solved it for me. I'm not sure why or how, as I'm not certain what that .dll does (since the rule of thumb is not to mess with Sys32) but that did it. Thanks for the help, I'm going to put this in a steam guide just in case anyone else runs into problems.

 

[Cracktalkz]

had the same problem. (screen white when booted up) reinstalling did nothing.
found a solution. go to documents/paradox interactive, and the delete the stellaris folder (watch out for save games) this worked for me, the next time i booted my game up... well it didn't work because all mods were enabled.
but then i booted it up again with no mods, and then it worked.