Game crashing on launch, Black screen, load circle, freeze...

[AdamChattaway]

And how much were you playing LOTRO say in 2020, 2021 and here in 2022 before you Upgraded to Windows 11?

How often did you have issues during those Years on Windows 10?

If you only encountered this Issue being so much worse after changing to Windows 11, I think we pretty much have your problem when it comes to the Lord of the Rings Online.

I got 1600 hours on steam and i played most of my game time on the ssg client not steam so a lot. And with everyone upgrading to windows 11 now and ssg silent on the matter this is going to potentially kill the game. no game new or old i have has a probvlem with windows 11 other than this janky game. i mean we shouldn't need to download dx9 files etc to get a game to run outside of install...

[Harvain]

I got 1600 hours on steam and i played most of my game time on the ssg client not steam so a lot. And with everyone upgrading to windows 11 now and ssg silent on the matter this is going to potentially kill the game. no game new or old i have has a probvlem with windows 11 other than this janky game. i mean we shouldn't need to download dx9 files etc to get a game to run outside of install...

Well the Lord of the Rings Online does span a very large amount of Technology Advances when it comes to Computers.

But I think we've narrowed down your issue to being that the Windows 11 Operating System & the Lord of the Rings Online are not getting along in your case.

I think if the SSG LOTRO Team sees this Thread, they should put out a Notice & ensure folks know that Windows 11 does not have Official Support for the Lord of the Rings Online as this problem will likely grow as more folks such as yourself get Windows 11.

[auximenes]

Reinstalled lotro, now i can;t play. every time i boot the game it gives a black screen and i have to crash the game or close it man.

Have you checked your firewall/security settings? Maybe remove any reference to turbine or ssg files and folders, relaunch, ok processes, log in, tab out to check for more security prompts, ok them as necessary.

[AdamChattaway]

Have you checked your firewall/security settings? Maybe remove any reference to turbine or ssg files and folders, relaunch, ok processes, log in, tab out to check for more security prompts, ok them as necessary.

Yeah i have. the problem is first time dx11 the game starts even if dx 9 is broken but then after that dx1 breaks. I've never had anything as bad and annoying as this in 22 years of pc gaming ever. lotro officially has become the only game i've ever been unable to fix.

[Polymachos]

My really old PC recently received an update to Windows 11, and the game ran just fine. instead, each time there is an update to this Windows, after reboot my keyboard isn't identified properly (and Windows does [i]not[]/i] tell me about that), so I am forced to unplug the USB connection and insert it again, sometimes even into a different socket.

I don't think that this is caused by Lotro, or DirectX. Rather something in that new operating system is failing to do its job properly. Don't blame SSG, if Microsoft is too lazy to check if they are still supporting older games as they should.

Ah, that reminds me, Lotro also requires that you have Visual C installed, doesn't it? Maybe the issue is to be found in that area. Compatibility of Microsoft products with Microsoft products.


Greetings, Polymachos

[Harvain]

Windows 11 is still a very brand new Operating System.

To put it bluntly: Anyone getting this Operating System are Test Subjects so that when folks in Late 2022 or 2023 & beyond get Windows 11, they'll have a good experience right out of the box.

Not every Game, piece of Tech, Program, etc has even moved to having Windows 11 Support and there is no time table for such unless a specific Game/Tech/Program has stated such.

[AdamChattaway]

Windows 11 is still a very brand new Operating System.

To put it bluntly: Anyone getting this Operating System are Test Subjects so that when folks in Late 2022 or 2023 & beyond get Windows 11, they'll have a good experience right out of the box.

Not every Game, piece of Tech, Program, etc has even moved to having Windows 11 Support and there is no time table for such unless a specific Game/Tech/Program has stated such.

I have over 300 games on steam, not a single other game ive tesed has had problems, even Knights of the old republic works and guild wars 1.

[Toomsie]

Getting the EXACT issue as original post. Happened after getting a rtx 3070 ti. Never had a problem before that. I could play all day and change settings all I wanted and alt-tab too.

First time I login the game works fine. (If I alt-tab the game stops responding)

If I then quit the game and restart it I get a black screen every time.

If I remove the UserPreference64.ini file in the Documents folder the game works as if it's the first time logging in again. Though, the settings reset obviously.

I tried every "fix" I've seen. Re-installed steam and non-steam. The DirectX stuff, C++ visual, starting in windowed mode, 32bit mode, dx9 mode, admin mode, firewall stuff, latest drivers, windows updates. None of it works. Still get black screen.

On Windows 10, Desktop PC. Still trying to find a fix. More so now with the great Anniversary Update and all

[Henios]

Is there really no solution for this problem? A friend of mine also has this problem and he can't play lotro for some months now..

[Trixie_Me]

Is there really no solution for this problem? A friend of mine also has this problem and he can't play lotro for some months now..

Have you tried setting windows to run lotro in high performance mode? It's worth a shot. Go to System -> Display -> Graphics then add lotroclient64.exe to the list and set it to high performance.

I don't know if this will fix it, but it can't hurt.

Edit: FWIW, I run Windows 11 and have an RTX 2060 graphics card and have no issues

[Tralfazz]

Is there really no solution for this problem? A friend of mine also has this problem and he can't play lotro for some months now..

Getting the EXACT issue as original post. Happened after getting a rtx 3070 ti. Never had a problem before that. I could play all day and change settings all I wanted and alt-tab too.

First time I login the game works fine. (If I alt-tab the game stops responding)

If I then quit the game and restart it I get a black screen every time.

If I remove the UserPreference64.ini file in the Documents folder the game works as if it's the first time logging in again. Though, the settings reset obviously.

I tried every "fix" I've seen. Re-installed steam and non-steam. The DirectX stuff, C++ visual, starting in windowed mode, 32bit mode, dx9 mode, admin mode, firewall stuff, latest drivers, windows updates. None of it works. Still get black screen.

On Windows 10, Desktop PC. Still trying to find a fix. More so now with the great Anniversary Update and all

Not a "fix" but a "workaround" – Try setting the game to use Full Screen Windowed mode. You can do this using the in-game OPTIONS panel. If you can't get into the game to use the in-game OPTIONS panel, you can edit one line in your My Documents\The Lord of the Rings Online\UserPreferences.ini file:
ScreenMode=FullScreenWindowed
Find that line and change it so that it is exactly as written above, spelling and capitalization count.

[aggaton]

Reinstalled lotro, now i can;t play. every time i boot the game it gives a black screen and i have to crash the game or close it man. if i delete the 2 ini files in documents the game will load up in dx11 but not dx9. once on char screen if i restart game same problem black screen until i delete ini files again. tried all the fixed, the SSG support page fixes, installing all the windows dx files and web thing. nothing i do will make the game run...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xuxx...annel=Gisborne

Not sure if this the same problem I have been having, but I guess it is worth a shot. I am running win11 with a amd radeon rx 5700 xt, amd ryzen 9 5900x 12 -core, 32GB of mem. 2560x1440 resolution on win desktop so I can run windowed without having to squint to read text on screen. Whenever game was launching both my screens were flickering like crazy and 9 out of 10 times it would reboot the computer. What fixed it for me was to turn on compatibility mode for win 7, Now I can start the game without any issues.

[SoLTaRRPG]

Not sure if this the same problem I have been having, but I guess it is worth a shot. I am running win11 with a amd radeon rx 5700 xt, amd ryzen 9 5900x 12 -core, 32GB of mem. 2560x1440 resolution on win desktop so I can run windowed without having to squint to read text on screen. Whenever game was launching both my screens were flickering like crazy and 9 out of 10 times it would reboot the computer. What fixed it for me was to turn on compatibility mode for win 7, Now I can start the game without any issues.

Omg i finally fixed the lotroclient64 problem that get stuck at login or whenever i hit enter middle earth, i did what you did to change both lotro launcher and lotroclient64.exe in the compatibility tab, compatibility mode to windows 7 and run this program as administrator,disable full screen optimizations, then on change high dpi settings ive checked the option that says override high dpi etc too, and now i could login very fast, i might have to try a few logins more to see if this really fixes the problem

[Wenston85]

Reinstalled lotro, now i can;t play. every time i boot the game it gives a black screen and i have to crash the game or close it man. if i delete the 2 ini files in documents the game will load up in dx11 but not dx9. once on char screen if i restart game same problem black screen until i delete ini files again. tried all the fixed, the SSG support page fixes, installing all the windows dx files and web thing. nothing i do will make the game run...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xuxx...annel=Gisborne

I'm getting this exact same problem and it just started today. I'd been playing lotro for ages, nothing update on my computer that I know of. Whenever I tried to start up from the launcher, the screen would just go black, have a blue circle for a cursor, have to force quit the program because it would stop responding. No crash, just wouldn't go. I've tried unintstalling and re-installing twice. I've tried un-installing and using the steam client instead. I've tried messing with my NVIDIA 3D settings, tried repairing from the patcher (which didn't even do ANYTHING) and it's just not working.

[Legoross]

I'm having the same issue I have made a new post it. Its weird as it works perfectly after deleting the pref.ini but then it doesn't after. to keep having to delete the pref.ini is insane. hope there is a fix and I can find out what wrong.

[savonarola]

I'm getting this exact same problem and it just started today. I'd been playing lotro for ages, nothing update on my computer that I know of. Whenever I tried to start up from the launcher, the screen would just go black, have a blue circle for a cursor, have to force quit the program because it would stop responding. No crash, just wouldn't go. I've tried unintstalling and re-installing twice. I've tried un-installing and using the steam client instead. I've tried messing with my NVIDIA 3D settings, tried repairing from the patcher (which didn't even do ANYTHING) and it's just not working.

it's spring of 2023 and I cannot believe this is still an issue. done everything that's been listed on the forums and still will not load:
- launcher comes up
- input password, select world
- launcher closes and the "ring" leaves the tray
when I open the launcher again it says the last time I was on was today but that's a stretch.

any other thoughts on this one yet?
had been playing since august 2007 but not now .....

running widows 11, 64bit
Intel i7 10700K
MSI B560I Gaming Edition
NVIDIA RTX 3070 Ti
16GB DDR4

[Odinshaw]

it's spring of 2023 and I cannot believe this is still an issue. done everything that's been listed on the forums and still will not load:
- launcher comes up
- input password, select world
- launcher closes and the "ring" leaves the tray
when I open the launcher again it says the last time I was on was today but that's a stretch.

any other thoughts on this one yet?
had been playing since august 2007 but not now .....

running widows 11, 64bit
Intel i7 10700K
MSI B560I Gaming Edition
NVIDIA RTX 3070 Ti
16GB DDR4

==

I had the same error after the update on April 28rd 2023, or at least, a similar one.

I have a 9.5 year old computer that is not running Windows 11.

I had found this post describing the symptoms--an official SSG notice:
https://help.standingstonegames.com/...-the-launcher-

However, none of the resolutions or efforts described actually resolved my problem. It was particularly irritating as I had just (on April 22nd) uninstalled the Steam version and installed the "stand alone" version. For some reason, after years of it not behaving the way it suddenly did, the LOTRO store within the game was trying to open an external web browser, using the system default, apparently because other people had problems with the Steam Wallet or something I never have used and had no idea what problem was being solved that I didn't have. My system default browser is a very locked down browser that can't do much of anything, blah blah. I uninstalled the Steam version, re-installed the stand-alone version, got everything working--including the in-game Lotro store interface as I had just days before it embarked on this quest, and life was good.

Then the update on April 28th made the game hang/freeze/sit and do nothing as described in the article and the OP's complaint...

What I did to fix my issue was I first checked to make sure I had all the files for Visual Studio redistributable stuff. Considering I had... just installed the game fresh and new a few days prior, Yes, I had everything it described. It seems really unlikely that somehow it got messed up.

I was able to get it working again (even with the previous failures being unkillable/unclosable tasks in the background... the lotro game executable simply refused to die/be killed/end tasked)...

After opening the client launcher "Options" and choosing the "General" tab, I chose the 32-bit client from the selection of game clients listed at the bottom. It gave me a warning that some day, some time in the future, the 32-bit client will no longer function! I boldy agreed to face such dangers; the game loaded just fine and I was able to get into the game and do stuff. No errors, nothing wrong, it all worked fine. I ran in circles and opened the vault and moved stuff around just to make stuff happen, then exited out to the desktop.

After I exited out, I hen started the client again, going into the Options/General as described previously.

This time I unchecked "Pre-cache gamelogic" I also Unchecked the High Resolution game data checkbox, and chose the 64-bit client.

The game loaded without issues--even with the still unkillable 64-bit client process in the background; I ended up with two lotro 64-bit clients running at once, the one that didn't work with the screen still stuck on the loading, and... one that launched into the game just fine.

I did the same tests with my character and exited out.

I then relaunched again, choosing the "Use High resolution game data" checkbox--the game launched just fine, no problems.

I exited the game, restarted Windows (not log out or sleep, but a complete reboot--to get rid of the unkillable lotro process and do it gracefully). After everything came back up, I launched the game again -- no problems.

I did not and haven't renabled the "Pre-cache gamelogic". I remember it being useful in Windows XP for me, but up until this event, I hadn't thought to experiment. As it turns out, the game still loads just as fast as before.

I did not have to: reinstall anything, repair anything, or change any settings outside of what is found in the client launcher itself.

Just today I logged in and poked around; I also picked up one of the expansions that were on sale -- everything works, no issues.

I think then it can be possible for some people to fix their issue without having to reinstall anything; in my case, I pretty much refused to reinstall it because I had done so deliberately less than a week before this happened, and spent more time running the installation than I had in actually playing the game prior to the most recent update causing game-breaking issues.. possibly due to having the cache enabled via the launcher.

The fact that there was an actual SSG support page with numerous options to resolve the issue leads me to believe it isn't OS specific, hardware specific, or Sauron extending his influence to elderly computers in an effort to get them to buy a modern PC -- but rather has to do with users that have non-default settings that might conflict with recent patches that expect, at least at first launch, a given set of defaults prior to giving control back to the user to set it however they want it again. With that in mind, a full reinstall of the game would certainly do that as well, as would reverting much of the graphics and reinstalling the various components that force the game to reset graphics back to defaults.

I hope that helps someone! And I hope they keep the 32-bit client around for a while longer yet at least as a trouble shooting tool hidden away somewhere, as being able to connect with it helped with my troubleshooting due to it actually working the first time I tried it... And when it worked without issue, that allowed me to reason that the hanging on the loading screen problem was likely a settings issue rather than something more serious.