I had a problem with ES menu being blank, randomly. or crashing to a black screen.
After a lot of troubleshooting, i found it was a VRAM issue caused by hooking it up to a 4k TV. It was simply way too big for the video card to handle.
You can try raising VRAM a lot higher, to 600ish, and see if that makes a difference. (you will need to get to that menu somehow though!)
Eventually i solved it by using xrandr from an SSH session. It forced a lower resolution.
