Guild Wars Display/Windowed Mode Issues on Gigabyte G5 Laptop (Black Screen, Transparent Window, Flickering, OBS/Discord Weirdness)

    Hi everyone,

    I'm hoping to pick the brains of some Guild Wars veterans because I've been fighting a very strange display issue for weeks and have not been able to solve it.

    System:

    • Gigabyte G5 laptop (KF/MF series)
    • Windows 11
    • Laptop display: 144Hz
    • External MSI monitor: 75Hz
    • Dual monitor setup
    • NVIDIA GPU

    The issue started after Guild Wars had already been working normally. At one point I was able to play without any major issues, but now I am experiencing a combination of problems depending on display mode.

    Symptoms:

    Fullscreen:

    • Sometimes works, sometimes behaves strangely.
    • Game can launch and I can move around normally.

    Windowed / Borderless / Windowed Fullscreen:

    • Black window.
    • White window.
    • Transparent/see-through window.
    • Sometimes the game appears to be running but the window itself is unusable.

    Alt+Enter Behavior:

    • One of the strangest things I've seen.
    • At one point, after using Alt+Enter, the game appeared correctly on my laptop screen while the broken/blank window remained on the external MSI monitor.
    • I could still move my character and interact with the game.

    Discord Test:

    • I streamed Guild Wars to friends through Discord.
    • Friends could see the game.
    • However, they reported that the stream flickered heavily.
    • When I switched between display modes, they could also see the black/white/transparent window issues.

    OBS Test:

    • I tested streaming through OBS.
    • I could see Guild Wars on my MSI monitor and move around using WASD.
    • OBS itself showed a black screen.
    • Input and cursor behavior became strange and seemed tied to the wrong display.

    Additional Weirdness:

    • The game is clearly running.
    • I can log in.
    • I can hear audio.
    • I can move my character.
    • The issue seems related to how Windows and/or Guild Wars is presenting the image rather than the game failing to launch.

    Things I've Tried:

    • Reinstalling Guild Wars.
    • Reinstalling GW Reforged.
    • NVIDIA driver updates.
    • Different display modes.
    • Alt+Enter.
    • Windowed mode.
    • Borderless/windowed fullscreen.
    • Fullscreen.
    • Various launch options.
    • Refresh rate testing.

    Refresh Rate Testing:

    • Laptop panel is 144Hz.
    • External MSI monitor is 75Hz.
    • I temporarily set BOTH displays to 60Hz to see if mismatched refresh rates were causing the issue.
    • No improvement.

    Current Theory:
    At this point I am leaning toward some kind of interaction between:

    • Windows 11
    • NVIDIA
    • Multi-monitor setup
    • DirectX 9 / Guild Wars rendering
    • Overlay or capture software

    The game itself does not appear to be crashing because:

    • I can log in.
    • I can move.
    • Audio works.
    • Discord sometimes sees the game.
    • OBS sometimes sees a black screen instead.

    Has anyone seen anything remotely similar with Guild Wars, especially on Windows 11 laptops using an external monitor?

    Any ideas would be appreciated because I feel like I've exhausted most of the obvious fixes.

    Thanks.

    There is a setting in Windows where you assign games to a graphics card. You may want to check out both available options. Windows always overrides the identical feature in NVIDIA's driver which is therefore entirely pointless. My old NVIDIA laptop has this feature on the 980M. Not sure if it still exists in more recently devices.

    I cannot test this on my G5 KF (300 Hz, but permanently underclocked to 60) because it recently broke and is getting repaired (hopefully).