Trying to play Darksiders in Windows 7, I just get a black screen at startup.

[Gecko9983]

I bought Darksiders in the last Steam sale and I'm just now getting around to playing it. But when I start it up, I just get a black screen. No logos, videos, or sounds appear.

The only way out of the black screen is with Ctrl+Alt+Delete, and when I do this, I notice that my monitor is set to an odd resolution, which is fixed when I close the Not Responding Darksiders process. My monitor should be 1680x1050. The game might be trying to play at 1280x720, but I am not sure.

There are a number of suggestions I've found and tried but none of them do anything other than bring up a black screen. These include:

• Deleting a file called "options.dopt" in C:\Users\(UserName)\AppData\Local\Darksiders. This file was not present to begin with, even in hidden files. And I tried using Everything to search my whole computer for this file and it's nowhere to be found.
  
• Rename or delete the logo videos that are supposed to play when the game starts up: AMD_Logo_movie.wmv, THQ_Logo1280x720.wmv, Vigil_Logo1280x720.wmv.
  
• Change the file extensions on the above videos to .bak instead of .wmv.
  
• Start the game by double clicking on DarksidersPC.exe instead of clicking "Play" in the Steam window.

I'm using Windows 7. Any more advice would be appreciated!

[jamiemac]

What are your system specs?

[Gecko9983]

AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black 3.2GHz
Asus M5A97 EVO ATX AM3+ Motherboard
Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory
Sapphire Radeon HD 6950 1GB Video Card
Windows 7 Professional

[fungfung_lam]

try installing these codecs
http://shark007.net/win7codecs.html

my first start up only showed the first two logos, then black screen.
some say you can delete a video file, but it is not a permanent solution.
after I installed the codecs, the problem of black screen solved

[ch6lam]

Originally Posted by fungfung_lam

try installing these codecs
http://shark007.net/win7codecs.html

my first start up only showed the first two logos, then black screen.
some say you can delete a video file, but it is not a permanent solution.
after I installed the codecs, the problem of black screen solved

It works. Thanks.

[lilskl]

Originally Posted by fungfung_lam

try installing these codecs
http://shark007.net/win7codecs.html

my first start up only showed the first two logos, then black screen.
some say you can delete a video file, but it is not a permanent solution.
after I installed the codecs, the problem of black screen solved

http://assassinhtpcblog.com/?page_id=39#guide1

Worked like a charm. This link would have been helpful to find sooner though. Thanks XD