New to this forum, Hi all

Just a casual user of GE, use it mostly to look at things that interest me from things I've read or heard about on the internet or TV news.
I used to travel a lot as an Oversize Load pilot car driver and while on the road I used Delorme's Street Atlas for setting up routes that were mandated by each state. I never used Google Earth.

Google Earth was present on my computer which suddenly became Google Earth Pro. I had no knowledge this was going to happen.

The other day I opened it and guess what. The window was black with a whole bunch of white squares scattered around the screen. Other than that the countries were outlined in yellow but with no colors. I am going to try to add a screenshot of the window.


This image is the best I could come up with, hope you can make some sense of it.

I haven't found a way to get the earth to show everything is black no matter how close in I zoom. Anybody have an idea why this is happening?

Used on an HP touchscreen (smartscreen?), the OS is windows 10. This is the only app. I'm having problems with.

Thanks in advance, Robert

As I was looking around I found a post asking why the black screen. There were some answers that at first I couldn't figure out but finally did, it required changing from OpenGL to DirectX. When I made the change from the first to the second the earth showed up as it should.

Should have looked around first but I'd no idea where to look so I was lucky to find it almost immediately.

Hi Robert,



This seems to be what happened to a friend of mine last week.  He hates computers, but sometimes indulges me by looking at KMZ files I send him. Like you, he had previously installed only GE, (and if I know my friend, it was probably not the most recent version, either), and GEPro was automatically installed when he logged on. He reported seeing only the "dots," but not the outline map that your images shows. He did have his My Places files showing. I got him to log on and off the Server, and to uninstall and install GEPro. Neither of these things helped, and he was out of patience.



I think you will probably have a better chance of getting some help if you post your question at the Google Maps/Earth Help Forum (link at the upper right of this page). Please come back here and report when you find a solution.

Washi

I looked around and found the answer. Have your friend got to the tools on the menu then click on Options at the bottom of that menu. That will bring up the options widow. The far right box is labeled Graphic Mode. below that he will see OpenGL and DirectX. Which ever is set go to the other on and click on it.

In my case the OpenGL was marked so I went to DirectX. That change will require him to restart GL which should, as in my case, bring up the earth as it should be.

Good luck, hope it works as well for him as it did for me.

Thank you, Robert.  Good to have you aboard.