Hit Play, music plays, menu sounds... game not actually open.

[Shada Mori]

This perplexes me.

Yesterday (Sunday) .. could play just fine. This morning try to log on .. open the patcher, hit update, button changes to play after a quick check.. hit play...

Trion music plays, then menu music.. okay all good.. except slight problem..

No game window opens. Instead my mouse gets stuck at the top of the screen, menu sound keeps playing but nothing else. Tab doesn't work, and all I can do is open my Task Manager and forcibly kill the operation.

So I contacted live support... which went like this ..

[03:51:18 PM] Thanks for contacting Trion Worlds Customer Support. My name is GM Vorkrim. I'm happy to look into your issue for you today.
[03:51:26 PM] GM Vorkrim: I can certainly understand how that can be frustrating. I will be more than happy to assist you with that! In order to do so, I'm going to need to collect some information from you.

May I please have the e-mail that is associated with the account you are having the issue with?
[03:51:48 PM] End-user: sure. its morisunlee@gmail.com
[03:52:45 PM] GM Vorkrim: Great, thanks! Just a moment while I retrieve your account information.
[03:55:06 PM] GM Vorkrim: Thank you for your patience. Are you looking to play RIFT or Defiance?
[03:55:17 PM] End-user: Defiance. Sorry.
[03:56:14 PM] GM Vorkrim: Thank you, which platform are you currently playing Defiance?
[03:56:55 PM] End-user: Playing on PC.
[03:58:09 PM] GM Vorkrim: Thank you, I will need to gather information from your DirectX Diagnostic Tool.

To run the DirectX Diagnostic Tool and send us your machine’s DxDiag information:

1. Press the “Windows” and “R” keys simultaneously to open your “Run” window.
2. In your “Run” window, type “dxdiag” without the quotes and click “OK.” This will open the DirectX Diagnostic Tool window.
3. Click on the “Save All Information” button at the bottom of the window. This will save a text file named “DxDiag.txt” to a location of your choosing.
[03:59:36 PM] End-user: Okay, want me to attach file it?
[03:59:57 PM] GM Vorkrim: Thank you, please attach the file once you have followed these steps.
[04:00:05 PM] GM Vorkrim: Thank you, just a moment please.
[04:04:16 PM] GM Vorkrim: Thank you for your patience. I'm sorry to hear that you are experiencing graphical issues, I realize it is a frustration and I'm happy to assist! It appears that your system's video drivers are out of date. I would suggest downloading the latest drivers for your system's video card, which can be found at the following link:

http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx

The newest drivers for your video card were released on 07/01/2013.

You may need to uninstall your current drivers prior to updating, as this should help avoid any potential problems with the driver update. Once your drivers have finished installing and your system has rebooted, please let us know if you continue to experience any problems.
[04:05:33 PM] End-user: So I gotta try that and wait in line again, even though the program loaded fine two days ago?
[04:06:28 PM] GM Vorkrim: I would suggest to install the newest drivers for your system and this should resolve this issue. You may need to also disable all non-essential startup items and services that are running in the background using your System Configuration utility.
[04:06:41 PM] GM Vorkrim: You can run this utility by following the steps below:

Please Note - If you have any biometric software (Fingerprint readers) on your system, you will want to make sure not to disable it.

Windows XP/Vista/7

1. Press the 'Windows' + 'R' keys simultaneously.
2. In the 'Run' window that appears, type 'msconfig' without the quotes and click 'OK.'
3. In your resulting 'System Configuration' window, click on the 'Startup' tab.
4. Disable all of the programs that are unnecessarily run on computer startup. (Please note that your security software may be among the listed startup programs, and that you can always disable or enable additional software using this list before or after computer restarts).
5. Click on the 'Services' tab.
6. Click on the checkbox next to 'Hide all Microsoft services.' This will remove all of the Microsoft services from the Services list and keep them from becoming disabled.
7. Click on the 'Disable all' button.
8. Click 'OK.'
You will then be prompted to restart your computer, which you should do before proceeding.
[04:07:10 PM] GM Vorkrim: I would suggest to try these two steps and restart your computer.
[04:07:39 PM] GM Vorkrim: If you still experience this issue, please contact us again, and we will be happy to assist you further.
[04:07:53 PM] End-user: That makes no sense since it only started doing this today and nothing has changed on my system. But fine. Will give it a shot. Not really satisfied with that.
[04:08:01 PM] '' disconnected ('Concluded by End-user').

Did exactly as suggested. And shock of shocks.. nothing changed. Because everything was actually up to date on my system and nothing was running in the background.

So then I took it on myself to try a complete wipe of defiance from my system.. and I mean complete including the user data... and reinstalling. Took hours to patch of course cause it restarted twice but finally finished.... and its still doing it.

Before someone chimes in, no I don't have the beta or alpha installed, yes my drivers and directX are up to date, and no I have not changed anything on my system.. hardware or software.. since sunday when the game ran last.

Does anyone have any ideas what could be causing this?

[Shada Mori]

Found a work around in another thread..

http://forums.defiance.com/showthrea...ow-not-opening

It might be related to the issue of closing the game in Windowed-mode instead of FullScreen-mode. Once you see Defiance in the task bar, try seeing if this helps.... Open Task Manager. Select the Applications tab. Click once on the Defiance app (not the game launcher) to highlight it. Then right-click and choose Maximize.

.. this works but its not performing correctly. Its at least somewhat playable. Still if anyone has any input that can offer it would be appreciated.

[Rubinelle]

Your solution works just fine...Just had the same issue with my boyfriends game. Once you get into the Task Manager (ctrl+alt+delete) go straight into the window, right click the Defiance menu, and hit Maximize, then Bring to Front if it doesn't come up after a few seconds. Once it does come up (IF it comes up) just switch it to Fullscreen and LEAVE IT THERE!