Resident Evil Village | Won’t Launch/Black Screen/Game Crash Fix

Resident Evil Village though as enjoyable as it is, comes with its own set of problems. A lot of players are talking about these issues. Some of you are unable to simply start the game. While for some the game simply boots to a black window. Many others have complained that when they click on the launch option nothing happens even though they can see the re8.exe file running in the Task Manager panel.

Along with these, there is also the major crash issue that seems to accompany every game nowadays. Keeping all these issues in mind, I have compiled a guide for you that hopefully resolves your problem and lets you enjoy the game smoothly. However, do keep in mind that there is no “One Solution For All”. I have listed all the fixes, but whichever works out for you depends on the specific kind of issue you are facing and the specific system you are using. Read on to know more…


How To Fix Game Crashing/Black Screen/Won’t Launch In RE Village

Steps/Possible Fixes To Follow:

  • Check your Driver Base with the help of the following links:

AMD VGA Drivers Official
Nvidia VGA Drivers Official
MS Direct X DX WebInstaller

  • Check for Windows Updates:

Select the Start button, then select Settings > Update & security > Windows Update. Select Check For Updates to check updates manually. Also, check for Device Driver Updates if the feature is available.

  • Update the dot.net framework from this link, if you have an older version.
  • Check your game files. Verify the files and reinstall the game if necessary or wait out for a few hours and restart the game. The issue could be related to HDD / SSD which we don’t know for sure yet.
  • For some players “repair files” option has worked along with a couple of reboots. Clean install your system and restart the game a couple of hours later.
  • As a last resort, you can also format the whole PC and reinstall everything. Remember to save all your data somewhere before that.
  • Rollback to an older driver.
  • Install the Latest Nvidia driver version from here, if the rollback function did not work out for you.
  • Run the game as an admin. You need to navigate to the folder of the game, find the re8.exe, right-click and select properties, compatibility, and mark “Run this program as an administrator”, click ok. Now try to run the game.
  • Install 368.81 Nvidia drivers and play. This is actually a 2016 solution. The latest GPU drivers may not work here. The question ‘why?’ comes to mind. Could it be that the game began development in 2016? Here is the official download link for the driver: Link
  • Change the config.ini file :

– Find the config.ini file.
– Change it, so the Capabilities setting is set to DirectX11.
– Start the game again. It will fail.
– Uninstall the game, and install it again.

If it reverts the changes then go for copy protection on the file you changed via properties in Windows Explorer.


Most people have said that simply restarting the game after a couple of hours makes it work for them. However, I would recommend you try out these solutions if that fails for you. If your issue persists even after all these fixes then you may need to wait for a patch from the developers. Hopefully, I may have been able to help a few of you with this guide. For other guides on Resident Evil Village click here. We will definitely keep more coming! In the meantime have fun and stay safe always!


Last Updated on January 15, 2022

4 thoughts on “Resident Evil Village | Won’t Launch/Black Screen/Game Crash Fix”

  1. I installed RE8 a week or two after it came out and it worked fine. Went to boot it up today and it goes to black screen makes a weird sound and then crashes. I was up half the night tring to find out what was wrong, nothing has changed.

    This fix it instantly. I will give detailed instructions on how I did it for windows 10.

    1. Know what drive you have it installed on.
    2. Go to your start menu and scroll down to till you see Windows System
    3. Click that and you will see something called Command Prompt
    4. Right click that and select more and finally click run as administrator
    5. You should now see a terminal window pop up.
    6. Type chkdsk with drive letter and colon of your RE8 install drive /F – the F means fix.
    7. Example my RE8 is on E: drive so I type — chkdsk E: /F
    8. It will now say this.
    9. Type Y to dismount the drive. It will fix bad sectors once it finishes boot RE8.
    10. No word of a lie I couldn’t believe when I got back in game.

    Chkdsk cannot run because the volume is in use by another
    process. Chkdsk may run if this volume is dismounted first.
    ALL OPENED HANDLES TO THIS VOLUME WOULD THEN BE INVALID.
    Would you like to force a dismount on this volume? (Y/N)

    1. Thank you for your valuable insight. As I mentioned in the guide that we don’t have a ‘one-solution-for-all’ fix. Hopefully players are going to be able to resolve their respective issues by reading your comment. I will take care to add it to our post.

    2. I appreciate your enthusiasm and was hoping your fix would work for me, but it did not 🙁
      I bought the game on Steam and proceeded to launch it, got the weird InstallerMessage.exe thing and then it launched a nearly full screen window, black, after 3 seconds the game closes. I have never been able to launch the game. I am using a 5800x and a 3070. No luck starting the game, so sad lol

      1. I am really sorry that you could not enjoy the game. In my opinion the best course of action for you would be to contact the developer team. However if you are still unsatisfied then all you can do right now is go for a refund. Hopefully you can still enjoy the other big games coming this year.

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