COD 4 : Modern Warfare Remastered 2017 (Steam) – logo appears, brief black screen, then exits to Steam after resolution change

[dlindsey 0]

I'm hoping someone here has run into this before.

The game previously launched and ran correctly, but after changing some display / resolution settings it now refuses to start properly.

Current behavior:

• Launch game from Steam
• Safe Mode prompt appears
• If I choose Yes, the game still behaves the same
• The game logo appears briefly
• Screen flickers black for a moment (looks like it's attempting to switch video mode)
• Game immediately exits back to Steam with no error message

No crash dialog, no Windows error, nothing in Steam.

Important context:

Originally the game kept launching on my secondary monitor instead of my laptop display. I was experimenting with resolution / display mode settings trying to correct that. After doing so, the game began exhibiting the behavior described above.

So the issue started immediately after changing resolution/display settings.

System:

Windows 11
Lenovo laptop
NVIDIA RTX GPU
Dual-monitor setup (laptop display + external Dell monitor)
Game installed via Steam

Troubleshooting attempted so far:

• Launching in Safe Mode
• Verifying game files in Steam
• Updating NVIDIA drivers
• Switching Windows display to single-monitor mode
• Disconnecting the secondary monitor
• Various launch attempts after restarting

None of these changed the behavior.

One thing I noticed is that the folder:

Documents → Call of Duty Modern Warfare Remastered

exists but appears empty.

I'm wondering if the game is failing when it tries to load or create its video configuration.

If anyone knows how to manually reset the renderer / display configuration, or has seen this exact launch behavior before, I'd really appreciate the help.