So I have followed the installation instructions to the word.
I enabled DirectPlay and .NET Frameword 3.5 and 4.7.
Essentially what happens is that I try to load a character and then the screen goes black, still able to hear the game's music, and then it just disappears. No error message or anything.
Trying to load my character again and got a ban.
I tried to uninstall Discovery and Freelancer with no success. Crash still happens with the black screen and no message.
Uninstalled freelancer and ticked the box to remove all the saved files and server stuff.
Discovery on the other hand I used the uninstall.exe but when I installed it again it remembered my accounts. Not sure if the uninstall.exe uninstalled it properly.
I played last night and the game did crash a few times but I never got banned and I got to mine until I had a Hegemon.
I got unbanned but immediately got banned again after trying to load my BDM character. My other account had a crash as well but did not get banned.
So the game just worked. Loaded my character fine and I drew cash from my other account($20 mil). I selected to choose a new server to delete my one character from my other account so that I can rename my character with a BDM ID to my desired name. After deleting the account I tried to load the character I want to rename, the game flickered twice with "Loading..." and "Taking longer than expected" and then the screen went black again. Could still hear the music in the background while the screen was black and my account has not yet been banned.
Thank you for responding! So the freelancer.exe also disappeared from the memory after each black screen.
I think I might have fixed it though, used the torrent download link provided by the installation guide. The iso file from the torrent and the one from the link download differ in size.
Did a fresh reinstall for both Discovery and Freelancer and did not activate the bloom effect. Haven't had the weird blackout crash again, this being said I only logged on once and did a mining trip.
This a bloom thing; disab;e bloom before logging in. If I recall the hotkey is either F12 or Ctrl+F12. It can be disabled in the lobby before connecting to the server. You can safely re-enable it once you're in space.