Black screen of going nowhere

A few days ago i Noticed all expired accounts had been reactivated, so i though i would log in and see what i could see even though i know i would not be able to play my Unity Character.

So i go and log in no problems, patch updates fine and game starts to load and i get first sounds of music and see loading screen all looking good so far, untill it decides to hang on the loading of character info even though i dont have any for the chaos server as am just wanting to make a character to have a look around.

I repeated this a few times and on about 4 attempt it got me to the character choice screen so i thought all is good - but while attempting to choose a race it then freezes on me again forcing me to restart my machine.

Since this time i can still log in ok, but when it gets past the scan onto where it should show current event and music playing while loading the information in ,it now just remains black and nothing happens.

I have tried all different logins and launchers but i still get the black screen, have even reinstalled the game and repatched and still after login i remain stuck on the black screen.

Tror Rockplate(Unity)

If you have a Creative soundcard, disable it:

right click on My Computer -> Properties -> Hardware -> Device Manager -> find your soundcard, probably under "Sound, video and game controllers" -> right click on it and click Disable

It need not be disabled the entire time you use your computer, or even the entire time you're playing Horizons. You can re-enable it after logging out, or, if you want to listen to music while playing or such, you can re-enable it after you've loaded in. Just remember to disable the soundcard again before recalling, using a portal, or otherwise encountering a loading screen. And before doing so, exit your music player and anything else that may be actively using the soundcard. Note that even if you re-enable the soundcard while playing, Horizons will not be able to utilise it (as far as I know).

Might also help to disable on-access scanning of the Horizons folder by your anti-virus software, or if that is not possible, disable your anti-virus altogether while playing. The latter option should only be considered by those who know their computer is at very low risk of being infected, however (i.e. mine, because I do all hefty or dubious things on Linux instead of Windows, I don't open unknown email attachments, I don't install demo software, etc).

well thanks what you suggested has worked.

Only problem i have is that i hate playing without the sound on :(.

Yeah. x) But it can be gotten used to.

One can load Horizons' sound files into Winamp or Windows Media Player or <insert name of your favourite music player here> by visiting the resources\sound\ folder in the Horizons folder. I shuffle+repeat a selection of the contents of the music folder, for example.

The sound files are playable. You can go into your Horizons folder and look for the music folder. Open that up, open up your normal mp3 player on your computer, then drag all the files over into your mp3 player. Granted, this doesn't cause you to have the teleport music while you're teleporting, but you still get the music.

Oh, and while at it, don't forget to make specialized playlists of it in your mp3 player. That way, you don't have to listen to adventuring music while crafting, crafting music while adventuring and maybe you have that one tune from Metallica that you really DO want playing in the middle of attacking. Go ahead and add it in.

Well after a while of not doing anything to try and get sound and effects up and running again i decided to try that i had not tried.

I decided to uninstall my Audigy4 sound card data and then restart the machine, i then reinstalled my Audigy4 sound card data but this time have not updated the drivers with the old 2006 creative drivers.

I have basically have left it as though it was just a fresh install of a new card and now i have Sound and effects working 100% fine.

I presuming now that its working ok again that it may of just been a simple conflict bewtween game and sound card.
Anyway hope this may help others who have had this or similar problems unless they have already tried what i have done