Black Screen (Flashing 'L')

I don't know if this has been covered elsewhere, although not in any of the other threads I have looked in, and I was wondering if someone could please help me. Basically, I have overcome some of the more well-documented errors in getting the game up and running, but cannot seem to solve this last one. What happens is that when I click on the icon to run Football Manager 2009, the game loads - or appears to - but the screen is completely black. Well, I say black, it is actually ever so slightly off black, in that I can just about see the 'Kick Racism Out Of Football' logo and therefore know it is loading, but basically it is black and I cannot see what is going on. After a minute or two of this, I then get to a point where a flickering 'L' comes up in the bottom righthand corner of the screen and it has a kind of clock timer underneath. From here I can go no further since I cannot see what I'm doing and have to close the programme. Oh, and just in case it helps, when I ran the FM09Fix.exe file that generates an error report, the error I got back was 128. If anyone knows the solution to this I would, of course, be very glad to hear it; the only thing is, if I have to download something could you explain it all very simply since I'm basically remedial when it comes to things like that. Thanks.

Check out the FAQ: http://footballmanager.net/index.php?p=article&newsid=2543

Hope it helps you.

NO FEAR PEOPLE OF BLACK SCREEN FLASHING L PROBLEM i have found a solution i was angry with this problem almost pulling my hair out and then i decided to try some stuff out myself this is how you do it very simple.

all you do is download the latest patch for the game and then i don't know if you had to do this but to be sure you

Right-click on the FM 2009 shortcut Choose "Properties" from the pop-up menu. In the "Target" field, add the --reset_preferences command line option after "fm.exe", so it should look like this: "C:\Program Files\Sports Interactive\Football Manager 2009\fm.exe" --reset_preferences

believe this is the real solution from a 15 year old student lol thank you