Watch Dogs Legion – Fix Black Screen, Infinite Loading, Fatal Error & More on PC

Watchdogs Legion offers you a myriad of things to do besides admiring the gloomy setting that is dystopian London. When you’re not busy trying to clear your name off the many crimes you may or may not have committed you’re out hacking or gunning down someone without their permission, like how Agent 47 would do it. But you can’t do this as you’re one of the victims of the dreaded infinite loading screen! It’s not a Ubisoft game if it doesn’t involve you trying to troubleshoot your way out of issues that shouldn’t be happening in the first place. But that’s what we’re here for so let’s get that fixed!

Fix Black Screen, Infinite Loading, Fatal Error & More on PC | Watch Dogs Legion

As games get more and more sophisticated it is highly advised that you check your hardware first and see if it meets the games minimum requirements. If it does and you’re still getting any of the errors mentioned above a number of solutions will be provided for you below.

#1. Run as admin

First thing you always have as an option is to run the game as an Admin, so go and open Ubisoft Connect, click on your game to view the details, and go to properties.

You’ll be able to find the location of your local files here so click on Open folder and it will open another window for you. In that window you should see a Bin folder, click on that and find the file extension that says WatchDogsLegion.exe. Right click on that and choose Run as administrator and see if that fixes the issue.

You can also right click on it again and choose Properties to make further adjustments. What you need to do here is go to Compatibility and make sure to tick the box that says Run this program as an administrator. This way you’ll no longer have to keep on repeating the process every time you run the game. Click on apply and make sure you do the same to the file extension that says WatchDogsLegion_BE.exe

#2. Reinstall DirectX & VCRedist

If the issue persists go back to the root folder and click on Support. In here you will find two folders, make sure the one you open is DirectX!

Once you’re in that folder find the executable that says DXSETUP.exe and run it as an administrator. When the installer appears just follow the instructions for either reinstalling or repairing.

Next up is your VCRedist folder, click on that and you will see two to three folders all containing the same .exe file which is named vcredist_x64.exe. Go into those folders and run all of them as an administrator to begin reinstallation. This is incredibly useful if you’re getting Runtime dll errors!

#3. Set the game to High Performance

Now we’re going to check and see if you’re game is running on the correct graphics card as you might be using your laptop’s integrated graphics card instead, hence why the game isn’t running properly for you. To do this press your windows key and type in Graphics to go to your graphics settings.

After the window has finished loading make sure that Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling is turned on. Below that is Graphics performance preference, make sure that Desktop app is selected from the dropdown menu is click on Browse.

Again you will navigate to where the game is installed to add the exe file, once you add that click on the options and another window will pop up as you go. Choose High Performance and hit save.

Go to your Nvidia control panel next and go to the Manage 3D settings option. Select the program settings option and locate the .exe file again for Watch Dogs Legion. If the option isn’t there, click on add and simply go through your folders again to find where the game is installed to add it to the list. By the way, you won’t see this option if you’re on a PC!

Lastly, make sure that you’re graphics drivers are up to date along with your OS. After restarting try running the game again and see if everything works.

#4. DirectX 11 mode

If you’re having compatability issues with DirectX 12 you may simply use DirectX 11 instead. To do this go back to Ubisoft Connect and head on over to the bottom of your properties page. Click on Add command line arguments and type in “-dx11”.

#5. Fullscreen & Vsync

If you have no problems launching the game at this point then great! We just have a few more steps to make sure you experience is uninterrupted. Go to your options and choose Video, set your Window Mode to Fullscreen and play around with V-Sync to see what works for you.

You may have V-Sync toggled on or off to see if you still crash mid-game or not, of course having this turned off is what you would want if you have a higher refresh rate.

#6. Task Manager

The classic ctrl+alt+del, make sure your game is running in the background while doing this. Locate the game in your task manager, right click on it, and choose Go to details. Right click on the .exe shown above again and choose Set priority, you would want this to be set on High.

Your computer will now allocate more resources than usual to make sure your game runs without any issues after this.

#7. Verify game files

Another classic “on and off again” fix! Navigate back to your properties page again on your Ubisoft Connect and click on Verify files. If you’re running the game on Steam you can find this by choosing properties and Local files respectively.

#8. Disabling antivirus

With all the software games come with today it would be no surprise that they sometimes conflict with your antivirus software. As we use different programs for protection the best course of action would be to add the game to your antivirus’ exception or whitelist to make sure it doesn’t interfere with any other applications required to run your game.

With all those options available you would be able to run your game with no interruptions in no time. Now go try them out for yourself and get hacking!

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