How to fix Need For Speed : Shift black screen error or crashes

This has been a great month for PC gaming with the release of Resident Evil 5, Batman Arkham Asylum. Red Faction : Guerilla, etc. Today saw the release of yet another highly anticipated title for the PC, Need for Speed : Shift. First of all thank you EA for not fuc*ing up another NFS title – this game seems very promising. Based on my experience with the game so far (that’s 1-2 hours), car handling has been significantly improved. When maxed out, graphics looked pretty amazing  (especially the car models). Anyways purpose of this article is to provide possible fixes to some problems several folks seem to be having with the game.

NFS : Shift screen goes black

You might be able to load the game just fine but sometimes – mostly when you get control of a vehicle (when you load a race) - monitor might suddenly go black. Nothing but a black screen will be visible. This seems to be happening a lot under Windows XP. There are two possible fixes that might solve this issue (provided that your system meets minimum requirements)

Run game under compatibility mode for Windows 98.

Yeah it’s strange, we are used to running games under XP SP2 compatibility when problems arise. Since the black screen might be related to XP environment, try running with Windows 98/Me compatibility.

1. Right click the NFS : Shift executable (or shortcut).

2. Select ‘Properties’ and go to the ‘Compatibility’ tab. Choose Windows 98 from the list, select it and press ok.

3. Run the game.

There is another solution but this might be a little extreme. From the responses I saw on various gaming forums, Windows 7 users have had a lot less problems with NFS : Shift than XP users. If possible, try running the game under Windows 7.

Do you use a game controller?

Lots of people use 3rd party controllers rather than mouse + keyboard to play NFS games. Sometimes, issues or incompatibilities with such hardware might cause random crashes or black screen errors. If you are experiencing any, try removing your game controller and playing the game.

Whatever you do, please update your DX9 to the latest monthly runtime (regardless of using Vista, XP or Windows 7). It can be downloaded from here. This will fix most (if not all) missing dll file errors and other issues related to DirectX. Also, don’t forget to update your display and audio drivers.

This post will be updated as more fixes are discovered.

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