Fix Blank Screen in Spider-man 3 for PC

I never played the Spider-man 3 video game when it came out (although I loved Spider-man 2 on the original Xbox), but I recently received the PC version as a gift from my girlfriend (we occasionally buy random items off each others’ Amazon.com wish lists) and installed it on my desktop PC. Unfortunately, when I started the game I only saw a blank screen. I could still hear audio but did not see any video.

I searched online and found several old forum posts from around 2007 that suggested unplugging USB devices or upgrading hardware to meet the minimum system requirements. I tried unplugging everything but my mouse and keyboard, but that didn’t work. I knew my hardware was up to the job because I built this desktop just a few years ago with high-end hardware. No other solutions presented themselves in my online searches.

I started messing with the compatibility settings of the Game.exe file as a last resort. It turns out that the blank screen can be resolved by disabling desktop composition. This turns off the Windows Aero glass effects while the game is running.

To change this setting, right-click on Game.exe and select Properties. Then go to the Compatibility tab and check the box for Disable desktop composition. Click OK to save the setting.

After updating this setting, I started up the game and had no problems (well, the resolution was set very low by default, but that’s an easy fix in the game options menu). For the record, I am running an AMD Radeon HD 5870 video card with the latest Catalyst drivers as of this posting.