Hi everyone,
I'm running Windows 8 64bit with a GTX 660 (current drivers) and an i5-3570K.
Before I started installing the mods from the guide, I tried to boot up the game to test. All I get is a black screen, but I can still hear the intro noises and music of the title screen. I'm forced to quit using ESC+Enter because the screen remains black the whole time.
I've tried restarting the computer, running as Administrator/a whole host of compatability options, as well as installing the recommended mods and restarting again. All to no avail.

Could anyone please shed some light on this problem?

+1 It actually worked once and never since. I'e uninstalled, reinstalled, mods and no mods, run it as admin, restarted, jumped three times and sang xhosa click song, all to no change. I'm running win 8 x64, 7870 and 3570k.

Can't help. But will report that it works just fine in W8 for me.

Figured it out: it was fraps. When running it blocked PS:T from displaying anything. So I'd recommend shutting that down and launching PS:T again.

Thanks, dpashkin. I had to shutdown Fraps, too

8x64 or 8.1x64?--probably the latter--but it never hurts to be precise where details are concerned.


Since admin mode didn't help...

It sounds like a case of your monitor losing sync with your gpu--which used to be a fairly common problem when people gamed on CRTs--it's not so common today, but it can happen, still. The game runs, the game screen attempts to open, but the screen is black, and you can hear the audio of the game running even though you can't see it. You'll want to check your GPU drivers to make sure that when the game runs it is running at 60Hz--not, say, 75Hz--if your monitor only supports 60Hz at the resolution the game is trying to run, etc. If you check that out thoroughly and it's still a no-go...

The third possibility I can think of at the moment is that you need to download the very latest DirectX runtime from Microsoft, and run DXSETUP.EXE (not DXWEBSETUP.EXE, because that often won't work with Vista and newer.) As the program runs you can watch it and note how many DirectX/D3d drivers it installs that it finds are missing or else older versions. The file you want to download is directx_Jun2010_redist.exe, about 98MBs. After that, the game should run in admin mode (or not--I've got one game that runs a lot worse in admin mode for some reason) without a problem, provided you have ensured that your monitor can support both the Hz/kHz modes of the resolution the game screen is attempting to open.

What waltc said, esp. about directx_Jun2010_redist.exe rather than the web install. Worked for me anyway,
This is FYI for future problem-havers and thanks to waltc.