Game loads to a black screen and .... nothing else

[Lillu]

Not sure if this will help, but sounds like a resolution issue anyways.
Quote from one of our players, Arremis:

For those of you who use a laptop (like me), first time users of EQEmu on a laptop will find that it can be a hassel. The reason is, EQ is a picky piece of software, and is designed for screens with a 4:3 resolution. EQ supports the following resolutions:

640x480 800x600 1024x768 1152x864 1280x768 1280x960 1280x1024 1600x1200

In order to get this to work on a screen that doesn't exactly match one of those resoultions, there's a simple rule to follow: set your EQ options to closest value of any of the above resolutions, without going over. A couple of examples:

On a screen with a 1366x768 resolution, you should use the 1280x768 resolution. As we can see 768 is the largest height we can use without going over, and since 1280 is smaller than 1366, that's as high as we can go. Technically, we could use 640x480, 800x600, and 1024x768, but that would only make our UI huge and not give us much game screen.

On a screen with a 1280x800 resolution, you should use 1280x786. As we can see, 1280 is the largest width we can use without going over, but because 800 is larger than 768 but smaller than 960, we can safely use 1280x768.

So what happens if we go over the resolution allowed? Odd graphical things will happen, anywhere from certain parts of the game not showing up to a completely black screen when you run the game.

The reason this works is because the game starts up at it's set resolution. As far as EQ is concerned, the resolution is at what it was set to be. Next, Windows expands it full screen (and doesn't give a toss what EQ says - you want full screen you got it), and what we have left is a nice working game with no glitches. You might find the odd quirk, such as a hotbutton not being exactly square, but it won't be so much that it makes a difference. All we want is a good looking game at a good resolution.