New Acer Aspire VX15 unable to play WoW and Overwatch

[Nerph-]

Hey there computer peoples!

So, I recently bought an Acer Aspire VX15 laptop. To list the specs in short, it has an i5-7300HQ CPU and GTX 1050 graphics card in it.

I've installed World of Warcraft and Overwatch, however I'm unable to get either to work. WoW just shows a black screen with the Legion cinematic sound in the background, clicking once brings up a circle cursor, clicking again causes it to crash with the 'World of Warcraft is not responding' windows dialog. Overwatch just shows a black background, no sound or cursor, and doesn't even crash. I have to sign out/reboot my laptop in order to get out of it.

I find this highly odd, as games like Path of Exile, Hearthstone, Stellaris and Playerunknown Battlegrounds all seem to run without a problem.

GeForce Experience says it can't optimize these games (in fact it says it can't optimize any of my games).

Things I've done to try solve the issue:

• Given the WoW.exe and Overwatch.exe admin privileges.

• Reset the game settings of both games.

• Freshly installed both games.

• Turned off Kaspersky Internet Security to see if this was causing the issue. There was no difference.

• Made sure my graphics card drivers are up to date (382.33 at time of posting)

I may have tried some other things that I can't remember now, if people post something I've tried, I'll update this post.

So yeah, I'm a bit at a loss as what to do. Any tips or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Kind Regards,

Nerph

[Thunderball]

Are you using the latest drivers?

[Nerph-]

Are you using the latest drivers?

Hey, I knew I'd forgotten to list something! Yeah I've made sure I'm updated to the latest graphics drivers (382.33 at this time). Would uninstalling them and doing a clean install make a difference you think?

[Vasciras]

Did you make sure that WoW and Overwatch is being launched through your GTX1050, and not through the integrated graphics?

[Nerph-]

Did you make sure that WoW and Overwatch is being launched through your GTX1050, and not through the integrated graphics?

Do I check that in the NVIDIA control panel? I'm guessing I need to add wow.exe (or whatever its called) and overwatch.exe to the list in the control panel and force it to use the gtx 1050?

Edit: Ok I did this, but it didn't make a difference. For a split second I was able to see the Blizzard logo before the screen went black when starting WoW.

[Thunderball]

Hey, I knew I'd forgotten to list something! Yeah I've made sure I'm updated to the latest graphics drivers (382.33 at this time). Would uninstalling them and doing a clean install make a difference you think?

Absolutely.

[Nerph-]

Absolutely.

Then I shall try this next. Thanks for the suggestion.

[Inukashi]

Have a look at the nvidia settings. There is a field in the '3d Settings -> Manage 3d Settings' tab. There is preferred Graphics processor. There is a 'bug' in Windows where this field often changes back to the integrated graphics.

[Nerph-]

Have a look at the nvidia settings. There is a field in the '3d Settings -> Manage 3d Settings' tab. There is preferred Graphics processor. There is a 'bug' in Windows where this field often changes back to the integrated graphics.

Ok I checked that and set it to nvidia gpu, still no joy though. I've not re-installed my graphics drivers yet though, which I will do. Hopefully that fixes it, otherwise it's back to the drawing board.

One thing I did read while googling was that you need to set the games to windowed mode, but without being able to get into the options of the games I'm not quite sure how to accomplish this.

[Nyeara]

Ok I checked that and set it to nvidia gpu, still no joy though. I've not re-installed my graphics drivers yet though, which I will do. Hopefully that fixes it, otherwise it's back to the drawing board.

One thing I did read while googling was that you need to set the games to windowed mode, but without being able to get into the options of the games I'm not quite sure how to accomplish this.

Edit the Config.wtf file to display windowed mode for world of warcraft SET gxWindow "1"
And for overwatch, same, config file settings_v0

FullscreenWindow = "0"
FullscreenWindowEnabled = "0"
WindowedFullscreen = "1"
WindowedHeight = "1003"
WindowedPosX = "0"
WindowedPosY = "0"
WindowedWidth = "1628"
WindowMode = "1"

[Nerph-]

Edit the Config.wtf file to display windowed mode for world of warcraft SET gxWindow "1"
And for overwatch, same, config file settings_v0

FullscreenWindow = "0"
FullscreenWindowEnabled = "0"
WindowedFullscreen = "1"
WindowedHeight = "1003"
WindowedPosX = "0"
WindowedPosY = "0"
WindowedWidth = "1628"
WindowMode = "1"

I found this solution googling too (but thank you for posting it as well!). However, neither WoW nor Overwatch seem to have a config or settings file that I can find probably because they don't get far enough to create it when the games are launched :S

I was wondering, is there a command line argument I can put in to achieve the same?

[Nyeara]

I found this solution googling too (but thank you for posting it as well!). However, neither WoW nor Overwatch seem to have a config or settings file that I can find probably because they don't get far enough to create it when the games are launched :S

I was wondering, is there a command line argument I can put in to achieve the same?

The config file for WoW will be in the WTF folder If you don't have one in there, you can create it on your own, by right clicking selecting New, then File Which you can create as a new notepad file, Then enter SET gxWindow "1", and upon entry in the game the rest should fill out itself. Not sure about Overwatch though

- - - Updated - - -

This may help you for the overwatch issue of black screen and such. Go to display settings in Control Panel on your computer, then change "set a custom scaling level" To 100% down from 125% And click Sign Out Now.

- - - Updated - - -

All else fails you could use the Geforce Experience app, to change both of the programs to windowed mode in settings. Other than that I'm out of ideas :/

[Nerph-]

The config file for WoW will be in the WTF folder If you don't have one in there, you can create it on your own, by right clicking selecting New, then File Which you can create as a new notepad file, Then enter SET gxWindow "1", and upon entry in the game the rest should fill out itself. Not sure about Overwatch though

- - - Updated - - -

This may help you for the overwatch issue of black screen and such. Go to display settings in Control Panel on your computer, then change "set a custom scaling level" To 100% down from 125% And click Sign Out Now.

- - - Updated - - -

All else fails you could use the Geforce Experience app, to change both of the programs to windowed mode in settings. Other than that I'm out of ideas :/

I created the file in the WTF folder and put in SET gxWindow "1", but no joy I'm afraid.

I've also set scaling to 100% (forgot to put that in my list in the first post, sorry!).

Annoyingly enough, I've also tried using Geforce Experience. I've tried all 3 settings, Fullscreen, Windowed Fullscreen and Windowed, and in all 3 I just get the black screen.

Thank you very much for taking time to help though, it's very much appreciated. I'll keep searching!

[Nyeara]

I created the file in the WTF folder and put in SET gxWindow "1", but no joy I'm afraid.

I've also set scaling to 100% (forgot to put that in my list in the first post, sorry!).

Annoyingly enough, I've also tried using Geforce Experience. I've tried all 3 settings, Fullscreen, Windowed Fullscreen and Windowed, and in all 3 I just get the black screen.

Thank you very much for taking time to help though, it's very much appreciated. I'll keep searching!

Have you tried hitting Alt + Enter on launch (overwatch, not sure if it'll work on WoW)

[Nerph-]

Have you tried hitting Alt + Enter on launch (overwatch, not sure if it'll work on WoW)

Just tried, no luck :/ This really feels like a driver issue, but I'm able to play other games... *shrug* this is weeeeiiirdddd.

[Nyeara]

Just tried, no luck :/ This really feels like a driver issue, but I'm able to play other games... *shrug* this is weeeeiiirdddd.

Very weird, try one version of driver prior to the one you have installed?

[Krozard]

One (possible) solution I heard of is to start wow, and when it gives the black screen hold down the windows key and press enter - this should bring up a prompt to turn on windows narrator - some people say simply bringing the prompt up can fix it (should be able to just X out of the prompt)

[Nerph-]

Very weird, try one version of driver prior to the one you have installed?

I'll give that a try.

One (possible) solution I heard of is to start wow, and when it gives the black screen hold down the windows key and press enter - this should bring up a prompt to turn on windows narrator - some people say simply bringing the prompt up can fix it (should be able to just X out of the prompt)

Tried this, no luck unfortunately Keep the suggestions coming though!

[Krozard]

Do you usually play, or previously played, on a desktop with multiple monitors? I'm wondering if WoW may be somehow trying to launch on another monitor but since you only have one, it just just kinda freaks out...see if the wtf.config file has SET gxMonitor (From what I can tell this should be set to "0" if you only have 1 monitor).


Otherwise it might be trying to use the wrong graphics API - maybe try setting it to DirectX 11 by using -d3d11
(alternately check the config.wtf file for the line "SET gxApi" and make sure it shows SET gxApi "D3D11")

[Barnabas]

The best thing to do is return it and spend the 200 usd more for the i7.