The “Grey/Gray Screen of Death”
One of the most common issues people experience using Foundry VTT is a grey screen error, or “grey screen of death”. This is where a Foundry VTT game refuses to load or display properly, and instead becomes stuck on the titular “grey screen” or an infinite loading bar in-world.
How to fix grey screen issues
Below are the most common reasons behind grey screen issues for Foundry VTT games.
Third-Party Antivirus
Third-party antivirus such as Avast, AVG, and Norton are known to interfere with functionality on The Forge. We recommend uninstalling Avast or AVG if you are experiencing issues. Norton appears to work if you disable “safe web browsing” on their VPN feature.
We do not and will never recommend disabling the default antivirus that comes with Windows.
Module Issues
Sometimes, module conflicts/bugs can cause a world to load improperly, or fail to load at all. We recommend enabling safe configuration if the prior solutions are unable to fix grey screen errors. If safe configuration fixes the grey screen error, there is a module conflict/bug.
Users can try running through our Trouble with Modules guide after confirming it is a module conflict/bug.
Problems with Browser Hardware Acceleration
The most common reason for grey screen issues are problems with hardware acceleration. Rarely, this can happen to an entire group within a game, but is most often restricted to a player or two within the game. We have a guide to fixing hardware acceleration issues here.
World Size Issues
This is less common after recent improvements to loading larger worlds in Foundry VTT, but can still happen for some users.
Worlds that become too large can have issues loading, or even fail to load at all- producing an effect very similar to grey screen issues. We have a guide to diagnosing and fixing this issue here.