I've seen what you're talking about happen to me a couple of times. Usually it occurs when I'm set to auto-retry on Jiggly's and it loads me in while I'm alt+tabbed doing something else.
I get a black screen with any type of 3d rendering, I can see the escape menu and the console, but nothing actually in the game. Alt+tabbing in and out of the game never solves it, I always have to quit NS and restart it, then get back in line for Jiggly's again.
I don't really know what causes this, but I would try a couple of things.
First, make sure you have the latest video card drivers.
If you don't know what you've got, go to Start- > Run- > Type "dxdiag" -> Click "yes" -> Click on the "display" tab.
Your video card's specifications will be listed on this page, including manufacturer, model, ram size, current resolution, blah blah blah. Just write down what you have, and download drivers for it.
Next I would check the resolution you're running NS in against the resolution you're running windows in. Are they the same? If not, try making them the same. Some laptops have wide screen specialized resolutions, if the system is having to convert back and forth every time you alt tab or it tries to load something, that might be causing problems.
Thirdly, shut down any extraneous software before you load NS. Ctrl+alt+delete and go to your "Processes" tab, and see what's listed. Generally, if it says "SYSTEM" under "User Name" that process is important to running windows, and shouldn't be ended. (Note the use of caps - that distinction is important, if you have other processes running on your machine that are listed as the user name "system" or "System" they are probably not windows, and you should get a virus cleaner.)
Ending unneeded processes won't hurt anything, you're only turning things off temporarily. It will all come back once you restart your computer. Keep in mind that if you have a lot of stuff running on your machine, picking and choosing the things you want over the things you don't want is difficult. Especially with anti-virus software. If you don't know what something is, Google it.
Here's what my process list looks like right now:
I use an iron fist on my process list. If yours is significantly longer than mine, you should consider removing some of the crap on your machine.
If you need further instructions on how to clean out your machine a little better, I can post a separate thread about it later.
And finally, I would get into the video card settings for your laptop and do some kind of color calibration. Normally they have a wizard you can go through to calibrate your monitor for best performance color wise, and it sounds like yours is set wrong. Play with the contrast and the gamma too, as well as color temperature. Maybe take a screenshot of commanding in NS and have it up while you play with settings.
Post again once you've tried all this and let me know how it went.
--Locane
