Stupid blank screen! neeed help

[Jmacds]

I've only recently had this problem with Medieval 2 and kingdoms, when I launch the game vanilla or any of the kingdoms mods the screen turns black and I have the hourglass appear as my cursor and that is it it stays there I cant alt tab or start task manager or anything although if i bring up the start menu the screen remains black but the cursor changes back when i hover over it but does nothing if i click on it, the only way to exit is to turn of my computer manually. Any advice or help would be appreciated

[irishron]

You have been able to play it on this machine before, then?

Have you installed any mods or edited any files since the last time it loaded?

[Jmacds]

I have been able to even on high settings although that may be a contribution to it not working

[Jmacds]

I just had the game freshly installed and I'm pretty sure i have no mods installed

[irishron]

Have you ever been able to play the game on this machine?

I am questioning because of its specs.

[Jmacds]

other than some driver updates i haven't installed anything but I will try deleting the preferences file also my zone alarm might be interfering although i have had it previously runing when medieval did work some I'm unsure

[irishron]

Have you tried deleting the medieval2.preference.cfg and let the game generate a new one?

Have you added/changed any software since the last time it worked? Antivirus and/or firewall come to mind.

[Jmacds]

Cheers for the help turns out it works if I turn off my firewall although I would prefer if I could have it on, oh well onto downloading my favourite mods

[irishron]

Zone Alarm when I had it had in its preferences where you could manually set Medieval2 and Kingdoms. Besides the subscription price going up at the time, one of their updates did this to me, too.