Troubleshooting a Black Screen Game - A Guide
 

Ever launch a game and just end up with a black screen? and you've had to hard reset it from the back to reboot?For those on custom firmware, this is a guide on how to troubleshoot your black screen games. I decided to create this thread because frankly, a lot of new threads are being made about the same problem when all one has to do is research. So let's start.

Note: I have to add this in, but for all you pirates out there, if you downloaded a game from a random website or any website at all for that matter, you may have corrupt files or bad Eboots etc. and that could be one reason as to why the game does not launch.

Also Note that I'm assuming your using multiMAN as a backup manager.

Let me give a little lecture on a piracy before we begin as well. DO NOT I REPEAT DO NOT come to this thread and say " I downloaded this game and it doesn't work." I swear to god i will haunt your dreams. On a more serious note, piracy is frowned upon in these forums so please reword your question. NO ONE cares if you pirate, it's just when you announce it that people get ticked. Also do not turn this thread into another piracy thread. That is not its purpose.

*STOPS RANT*

A Guide Brought to you by Hackboiz29:

3.6x+ Games:
The games that are going to be coming out as of now are most likely going to be 3.6x+ games. This means that they will not work with 3.55 CFW and will just return to error code after launching it. Do a little research by using this and you will know whether your game is playable on CFW or not.Now some of you may be wondering, games such as Brink that require 3.60 to play, how do they work? Well that is very simple, when playing the game you had to install a pkg file which was a game update that was signed with the 3.55 keys because Sony didn't want to hand out the 3.60 SDK to all the developers.

That was a long intro, let's start.


1. Make sure the game you are trying to play is not a 3.6x game (e.g. Portal 2), as they will not work.

2. If you know that your game requires 3.56, you will need to fix the eboot (or find one here)

Short tutorial on how to fix an eboot that requires 3.56:

You will need these tools(Windows only)

2.1 Make a backup copy of your backup onto an external drive or FTP the game onto your computer. You should see the GAMEID BLES or BLUSXXXX and inside it PS3_GAME, PS3_UPDATE(not always there),PS3_DISC.SFB.

2.2 Now you want to drag and Drop PS3_GAME folder onto EbootFix.exe and let it do its thing.

2.3 You will now have a NPDRM folder and RETAIL folder. Go into the retail one and copy the PARAM.SFO file as well as the EBOOT.BIN and replace them with the original ones (make a backup just incase).

2.4 Now FTP your game back or Transfer with your External Drive

2.5 Launch the game and enjoy.

3. For those that have your games on an External HDD, you can use the BD-Mirror Option in multiman. Press triangle on your game and select BD-Mirror at the bottom left of your screen.This has worked for me numerous times.

4. Sometimes a game will only work if you put it on an external HDD and vice-versa so try both if you haven't already or can't because you don't have one.

5. Sometimes, an eboot is out there that fixes a black screen issue so google is your friend.

6.. In rare cases you will need a game update to make your game work even though it is not a 3.6x game. For e.g. Black Ops worked for me after installing the 1.07 Game Update. You can get game updates in .pkg format here

7. I have found that some CFWs have better stability for games than others. Some of my black screen games started working on Rebug CFW and didn't on Kmeaw. You can get the Rebug CFW here

8.Some games like the Assasin's Creed series require you to make an empty folder called ASSASIN_ISO in order for the game to work.

9. Lastly you can try any of the options like Restore file system, rebuild database from recovery menu but i don't really recommend it.

10. After you have tried all these steps and oddly failed, I recommend just playing it from the original disc because they will most likely not launch no matter what you do.


*Any more things i can add or stuff you did to avoid black screens please hit me up in the comments and tell me your story. Other than that, i bid you goodbye for now. I will keep this updated as i get more info.

*I will try to help anyone out with any problems but i'm not active 24/7, i may be online but i'm not actually there.

thanks a bunch, now let the understanding begin,......

on a sidenote though, i've noticed some of the black screen games, after you have done the (select + X) routine to get the game booting, if an update was installed , or for that matter the game itself has installed gamefiles to the PS3, the (select + X) would no longer be required for that game.
for me this has worked several times on KMEAW 3.55 with MM