If you’re a Windows gamer, you’ve very likely had the issue where you’ve installed a game (including, but not limited to, Scrapland or System Shock 2), and when you start up the game, you get a black screen. Maybe there’s sound, maybe not. Maybe the application works except for the video – and maybe it doesn’t. When it doesn’t, you often have to use control-alt-delete to break out and kill the process.
There’s a bunch of possible causes, but one of the most common ones is easy to fix.