Whenever I launch the game I get stuck on a black screen with a cursor icon that indicates it's loading something but no matter how long I wait, nothing happens. I've tried running it in XP compatibility and in administrator mode and I tried running it in windowed mode but that just seems to do nothing at all.

Anyone else have this problem or now how to get around it? Thanks.

Just got this bug two days ago, I was about to post some info about it.

I've found this may be due to virtual drives conflicting with the game executable (and you'll get the same problem if you use a nocd in case you have an old CD version). I've got two of them set up and the one which was causing this issue was named A: .

Change the letter A for something else either with your virtual drive software or using Windows (look here for example: http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/137/~/how-to-change-the-drive-letter-assignment-in-windows-8,-7,-vista,-xp-or-2000 ).

On my PC, the game actually refuses to start if a virtual drive is either A: or B: . I'm not sure why! (if you're using virtual drive to play old games with CD audio, don't forget to rename the drive with a letter higher than your physical drive, or music may not play). Or you can try disabling/deleting the virtual drive altogether.

Not sure if it's the same issue but I get that black screen when I've selected a resolution the game doesn't like. Sea Dogs is really particular with video cards and resolutions. Mine hated the 1600x900 resolution. Oddly enough, I was able to edit the engine.ini file to run 1920x1080 (widescreen no-less), and it works just fine, but some of those rezzes gets me the black screen of nothingness.

So, edit your engine.ini file and change HEIGHT and WIDTH to something standard like 640x480 and restart the game. It should load up again and you can switch to the other standard resolutions via the options menu. If you're feeling adventurous mess with that engine.ini file and change HXW to whatever res you want.

I just got the black screen problem when starting up. I fixed the issue with NVidia Control Panel by creating a game profile for it, and setting "Preferred refresh rate" to "Application-controlled". In my main settings, I have this setting at max refresh for monitor.

I just got the game working by downgrading it to v1.05. Not entirely sure how I'm supposed to patch it back to 1.06 as this still gives me a bunch of errors like "english version only!" I also tried a 1.06 no-cd crack which replaces the CORE.dll but trying to apply this crack gives me a message saying the file is already cracked or different.

EDIT:
I reinstalled the game to get it back to 1.06 but it gave me the black screen again. After looking around I found a download for a 1.06 patch that finally did work! I can't post any links apparently but for anyone who runs into this problem in the future; Megagames is your friend.
Just replace the files in the Sea Dogs folder with the files in the .ace file and launch the game by launching it through "Launch Sea Dogs" in the Sea Dogs folder and it should work, you don't need to downgrade to 1.05 first.

Have the same problem. Still fiddling around with it, but I guess I'll just give up ranting in an hour. ...Ok... I did something very shocking I have not done in lots of years - Put a floppy disk in my drive A. Just to see whats happening. Right now PC sounds like it wants to format it or something & everything else is in half a hangup.

edit:
arg, screw it. I send a report & asked if somebody could have a chat here about that & combines the threats with the same issue. I don't want a refund, I want to shoot massive rows of cannons at other ships :/

I just ran into this bug today. It isn't specifically virtual drives. If you have anything assigned to A: (and possibly B:), the game will black screen with an hourglass when you start it. It doesn't matter if you have something in the drive or not.

I had an SD Card reader assigned to A: and it triggered the exact same bug. I would never have found the issue if not for your post, so thank you!

If your machine is old enough that it still has a built in floppy drive (as one of the prior posters sounds like he does), try disabling the floppy drive controller in the BIOS.

Good to know!

Regarding the floppy drive, using Disk Management in Windows (help given in my link above, at least for the latest OS, for XP the link is dead...) to change the drive letter may be easier than using the BIOS, if possible.

To go back a bit on what I wrote on virtual drives, latest Daemon Tools or Virtual Clone Drive should discard your virtual drive when the CD image is unmounted, and they don't automount to A: or B: by default. So at least this makes things easier - no need to check your drives if you're not mounting something.

I've had other issues with A: drives lately, sometimes with mods, others with installers. It's like D: partitions and some EA games like Alice Madness Returns, which refuses to install there. For example, CubanRaul's patch for Blood Omen (which is essential to play the game on current systems) has an option to install the game directly. However, if your CD image is mounted on A: (and maybe any drive letter before your physical drive's), the installer won't find the CD. And so on. It's like they prevented people to use floppies by mistake, or from installing on system drives like D: (well, I remember D: was a popular letter for Recovery partitions). I don't know why Sea Dogs does that, but yeah: A: drive is cursed.

I was also getting the issue with the black screen at startup but disabling my A drive somehow made the game work. Needless to say I was very pleased to see the main menu. Funnily enough my PC lists A as a floppy drive but there is no drive there. It only showed up after installing a USB 3.0 to 2.0 adapter. My motherboard only supports 2.0 while my case has 3.0 ports on the front. Still, it's weird that'd be the issue. PCs. I'll never understand them. Honestly this fix needs to be pinned and added to the support page.

I'm encountering the same issue, however, there are no drives on my system other than C and D.
Any advice on how I could solve the issue?