Trying to get back into this amazing game. Tried a different download, was able to go right into the beginning 3 movies, which worked fine (video and audio), but the main menu was blank. Black, no buttons, no outlines, nothing. Could hear menu music. Moving the mouse at random did not yield any results, i couldn't interact with anything on the menu. No crash.
Deleted that installation, followed the instructions from discovery verbatim, using the provided download links straight from discogc.com. .net frameworks have been enabled for forever, DirectPlay the same. Double checked and verified, using CMD to force enable these options. I downloaded the fonts and installed them. All drivers up to date. Launching Freelancer from its base directory, or from the disco directory, or using the disco launcher all yield the same results.
The game loads, cutscenes play or are bypassed as intended, but the menu screen is always black/blank and i cannot interact with anything. Switching to windowed mode yielded unusual behavior, both my 2 screens would flash every 2 seconds as if i was alt-tabbing at those intervals. I had to force close the game through task manager every time. Menu music would play, but no menu would appear. Sometimes I could alt-tab out, hover my mouse over the app in the taskbar, and the preview would show a snapshot of a normal menu. I'm thinking it's a render bug, like an improper video device is selected or something. Plox halp?
It seems you didn't have DirectX end-user runtimes, if a partial fix was reached with d3d8.dll install, try to find the said runtimes (iirc Microsoft removed from their site for some reason, but perhaps it's the only issue of my region), install it and restart your PC. Perhaps it will help