Black window when starting Brave on Windows 10 1909

Description

Since yesterday, I can’t use Brave any more because it just shows an completely black window

Steps to Reproduce

Open brave.exe regularly on Windows 10 Pro Version 1909

Actual result:

It looks like the controls are present because when moving the mouse over the screen, it turns into a hand and I see the title of a page from the pinned/mostly used pages:

I’m also able to close the window when clicking on the top right corner of the screen (altough there is no X button visible).

Expected result:

Having Brave started regularly with it’s GUI.

Reproduces how often:

I started the Browser up to 10 times using a desktop shortcut, directly open brave.exe, starting with admin permission, doble clicked on the title bar to maximize the window etc and I always got the black screen.

Brave version (brave://version info)

Because of the completely black UI, I’m not able to view any pages or call the browser info to see version informations. When navigating to C:\Program Files (x86)\BraveSoftware\Brave-Browser\Application there is a sub-folder 79.1.1.23, so I’l assume that this is the installed version.

Version/Channel Information:

• Can you reproduce this issue with the current release? I tried the latest stable release. Since it’s not possible to uninstall Brave, I can’t cleanly uninstall it and install a dev/nightly release instead.
• Can you reproduce this issue with the beta channel?
• Can you reproduce this issue with the dev channel?
• Can you reproduce this issue with the nightly channel?

Other Additional Information:

• Does the issue resolve itself when disabling Brave Shields? Not possible to test
• Does the issue resolve itself when disabling Brave Rewards? Not possible to test
• Is the issue reproducible on the latest version of Chrome? No

Miscellaneous Information:

What I already tried

• Download the installer and execute it again. Seems like the installer detects that Brave is already installed in the latest version, because a few seconds later the black window from Brave is opened
• Uninstalling Brave to re-install it using Windows App & Features. When clicking Uninstall, it opens a Window Uninstall Brave which only appears in the tash bar - I’m not able to open it:

• EDIT: Strangely it seems that when I start the ininstaller and the invisible Uninstall Brave window from the above screenshot is open, it’s possible to start Brave normally: But this just works if Brave is started when the uninstaller is open. I closed the uninstaller and Brave, then re-opened Brave and got the Black screen again.

[bsclifton]

Hi folks -

If latest version of Brave isn’t working, you can try editing the shortcut for Brave to add the following param for launch: --disable-gpu

This disables hardware acceleration which is not desirable - but it should fix the issue. Please let us know 😄

[Anish-Shobith]

Installing the latest version fixed the issue for me, thank you 😄