Okay, so the other day I was super hyped to jump into a ranked game of League. You know, grind that elo, climb that ladder. I picked my champion, locked in, and then…BAM! Black screen. Nothing. Just a dark void staring back at me. I was like, “Seriously?! Not now!”
Troubleshooting Time
First thing I did was the classic alt+tab. I tried to see if anything else was running, maybe something was hogging resources. Nope. Nothing weird there. So, I went for the good ol’ Ctrl+Alt+Delete. Task Manager popped up, and I forcefully shut down League. “Maybe it was just a hiccup,” I thought.
I restarted the client, hoping for the best. Got back into the game, reconnected…and… black screen AGAIN! At this point, my team was probably flaming me, thinking I was AFK, and honestly, I couldn’t blame them.
Next, I figured, “Maybe it’s my drivers.” I have an NVIDIA card, so I opened up the GeForce Experience and checked for updates. Lo and behold, there was a new driver available. “Could this be it?” I eagerly downloaded and installed the update, restarted my PC for good measure, and launched League one more time.
…Still a black screen. Argh!!!
Digging Deeper
Okay, time to consult the internet. I started Googling “lol black screen after champion select,”. There were tons of forum posts and Reddit threads with people having the same issue.
I tried a bunch of the * I tried from that included:
- Running the game as administrator.
- Changing my in-game resolution settings to windowed or borderless mode (had to edit the config file directly since I couldn’t get into the game).
- Disabling fullscreen optimizations.
- Making sure my DirectX was up to date.
- Even completely reinstalling the game!
None of it worked. I was starting to lose hope. One post talked about compatibility mode, that I need try.
The “Aha!” Moment (maybe)
I am going try setting League to run in compatibility mode for Windows 7.
I’ll right-clicked on the League of Legends shortcut, went to Properties, then the Compatibility tab, and check the box “Run this program in compatibility mode for:” and select “Windows 7”. Apply the changes, and launch the game.
I still need to play the game.I will share the results as soon as I get them.
