Moved to MediWiki → https://wiki.egosoft.com/wiki/X4:CleanInstallationGFX
Introduction
Sometimes it can occur that graphics card/device driver installations get into a state which prevents the game to start up correctly. The causes for this happening are multitude (ranging from an interrupted installation process, to driver corruption). While the situation became much more rare in recent years, occasionally this can still happen.
From a players point of view, this results in errors to start up the game. The game will usually report a specific 'Exitcode' where the number differs based on the concrete underlying issue (
Note: Not all exitcodes are hinting towards a driver installation issue!). In cases where part of the driver was simply not installed, the result can also be that starting the game just appears as if nothing happened (i.e. launching the game through Steam looks as if this simply doesn't do anything) or it can also result in a crash at gamestart (without reporting an exitcode).
Usually the best attempt to resolve this is to just reinstall (or upgrade to) the latest graphics card/device drivers. Sometimes however, this doesn't fix the problem, even though it all goes down to an issue with the driver installation.
The following steps provide a walkthrough of our suggested procedure to do a clean reinstallation of the graphics card drivers with the aim to almost completely rule out driver related installation issues causing any problems with the game.
Bare in mind that there are alternatives to this approach (some of them making use of 3rd-party tools to help with the procedure). While we are sure that several of these alternatives might be easier to work with, we cannot provide instructions or support for these.
If you get instructed by the support team to perform a clean reinstallation of your drivers, we therefore suggest you follow the procedure pointed out below first, before trying out alternative ways.
Step-by-step procedure to do a clean driver installation
1. Determine the system graphics devices
First thing to determine is the type of graphics devices installed in your system. If you don't know the graphics devices of your machine, please figure this out first, so you know which drivers you need to install in the following steps. If you contacted support and got instructed to follow these steps, the team would have told you which devices are installed in your system and which drivers you should install.
If you are following the steps here without being in touch with the support team, you can figure out the devices in your system by running the dxdiag tool. To run this, just press the Windows start button on the keyboard, enter dxdiag, and select to run the command:
The "DirectX Diagnostic Tool" window should appear and look something like this:
In there, you should see one or more tabs named Display X (where X ranges from 1 to the number of detected display devices). Laptops usually come with two devices nowadays: a dedicated graphics device and an integrated one. Make a note of the devices which will usually be an AMD, NVIDIA, and/or an Intel graphics device.
2. Removing current drivers and Vulkan Runtime
2a) Remove current Vulkan Runtime installations
After you determined the type of graphics devices you should remove any existing driver and any instance of the Vulkan runtime. Especially in cases where you might have previously installed a different graphics device (for example an AMD graphics card) which later was replaced by a graphics device of a different manufacturer (f.e. NVIDIA), you should make sure that any left over old drivers for the previous graphics device are uninstalled as well.
To remove the drivers, press the Windows start button on the keyboard and enter add remove:
This should bring up the option: "Add or remove programs". Click it, to bring up the Windows settings dialog to cleanly remove installed applications/drivers.
First thing is to make sure that you don't have any custom Vulkan runtimes installed. In the search box, enter vulkan.
If this brings up any matching entry stating: Vulkan Run Time Libraries X.X.XX.X please uninstall each of these entries starting with the latest version. In the screenshot below you would first uninstall the version 1.0.54.0 and after it was removed, uninstall 1.0.51.0.
Be aware that there might be multiple instances of each version installed on the system. If you see the same entry after uninstalling the version, just repeat it until the entry no longer shows up in the "Apps & features" list.
To uninstall the Vulkan Runtime libraries select the entry, and click on "Uninstall".
Confirm the selection by clicking on "Uninstall" once more:
Another Windows confirmation dialog might pop up. Confirm this again by clicking on "Yes".
The uninstall tool should start now and present a dialog like the following one. Simply click on "Uninstall" in the window.
When the deinstallation completed, click on Close.
2b) Remove AMD graphics card drivers
Next you want to check for the graphics device drivers. For AMD drivers, enter AMD in the search window. If this brings up one or more entries, make sure to uninstall these AMD drivers. The matching entry to do this for AMD is called: AMD Software. Leave the AMD Chipset drivers alone. They are fine to leave installed without impacting the graphics card drivers. The same goes for the AMD Radeon Settings. These might get uninstalled by uninstalling the AMD Software entry, which is fine. If they are left behind afterwards, there's no need to explicitly uninstall them.
First select the AMD Software entry and click on Uninstall. Confirm the selection by clicking on Uninstall once more.
Another Windows confirmation dialog might pop up. Confirm this again by clicking on "Yes".
The uninstall tool should start now and present a dialog like the following one. Simply click on "Yes" in the window.
This brings up the progress window:
Wait until the progress reaches 100% and select: "Restart Now" in the final dialog.
Once done, Windows might install default drivers for the AMD device. Allow this to go through. Afterwards ensure that the AMD Software entry and the Vulkan Runtime Libraries entries are gone from the Apps & features list.
2c) Remove NVIDIA graphics card drivers
Next you sould check for NVIDIA graphics card drivers by entering NVIDIA in the search box. If this shows up entries named "NVIDIA GeForce" as shown in the following screenshot, you should uninstall the entry called "NVIDIA Geforce Experience X.XX.X.XX" first (if present).
To uninstall GeForce Experience, select the entry (1) and click on Uninstall (2)
Confirm the intend by clicking Uninstall on the popup once more
Windows is likely to bring up another confirmation dialog where you need to click YES.
This finally starts the uninstaller where you have to click on UNINSTALL once more.
A progress window will show up. Just wait until it's done:
Once the uninstallation completed, a dialog will report the succeeded deinstallation:
Close the dialog.
If that application wasn't installed on your system or after you got it removed, uninstall the NVDIIA Graphics Driver XXX.XX entry.
As before, select the entry in the Apps & features list (1) and click on Uninstall (2)
Confirm the intend by clicking Uninstall on the popup once more
Windows is likely to bring up another confirmation dialog where you need to click YES.
This starts the uninstall tool. Wait until its preparations are done and the next confirmation dialog appears, where you should click on UNINSTALL.
A progress window will appear and your graphics device will likely reset (notable by the screens going blank shortly) at some point during this process.
Don't be surprised if on a multi monitor setup, monitors other than the main one will go blank.
On the next dialog, select to RESTART NOW to reboot the machine and completely remove the remains of the driver.
As pointed out above already for the AMD case, Windows might install default drivers now for the NVIDIA graphics device. Just let that process complete.
2d) Remove Intel graphics card drivers
If you happen to have an Intel graphics device installed, make sure to uninstall the current drivers for that device as well.
3. Install the latest drivers for the graphics devices
After the uninstallation of old drivers, you need to install the latest drivers.
If you have multiple graphics devices in your system, we recommend to install the drivers for the integrated device first (f.e. an Intel graphics device) and for a dedicated device afterwards (f.e. and AMD graphics device).
Latest drivers for AMD and NVIDIA graphics devices can be downloaded on the following pages.
Please note that while we also cover installing Intel graphics device drivers here, the game officially does only support dedicated graphics devices (either from AMD or NVIDIA). On systems with an integrated Intel graphics device it's however also important to keep the drivers for that device up to date as it is possible that outdated drivers for integrated graphic devices prevent the game from picking up the proper dedicated (supported graphics device).
Also as a side note: While we don't officially support running the game solely on Intel integrated graphics devices, we (currently) don't actively prevent the game from starting on these and do have knowledge that apparently some users are able to run the game to their satisfaction on such devices. Again however: WE DO NOT OFFICIALLY SUPPORT SUCH SYSTEM SETUPS and you need to be aware that you are likely to run into issues and suboptimal performance if you decide to do that regardless.
3a) Installing Intel drivers
On the download page select the device installed in your system (as you noted down in the first step).
Intel drivers are categorized by CPU generation.
First select Graphics Drivers on the download page.Then click on Products and select the CPU generation (f.e. 8th Generation for Coffee Lake CPUs). If you are unsure which generation your particular CPU is, check out the wikipedia page which has a good overview of which CPU corresponds to which CPU generation. Be careful however, since in some cases (especially for older CPUs) the model number and CPU generation can be a bit ambiguous.
Once you selected the CPU generation, select the actual product by clicking on Products again and chose the graphics device from the list. Finally pick the Operating system by clicking on the corresponding filter by entry.
Download the latest version of the driver and install it. Note that the download page usually provides two versions. An exe-package and a zip-package. We recommend using the exe-package, as this is easier to install.
Once the driver installation completed, restart the system and try to run the game again.
3b) Installing AMD drivers
On the download page select the device installed in your system (as you noted down in the first step).
For instance, if you have an AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT graphics card, select: Graphics -> AMD Radeon 5700 Series -> AMD Radeon RX 5700 Series -> AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT -> SUBMIT
If you have an AMD Ryzen 5 3550H with an integrated Vega graphics device instead, select: Processors with graphics -> AMD Ryzen Processors -> AMD Ryzen 5 Mobile Processors with Radeon Vega Graphics -> AMD Ryzen 5 3550H -> SUBMIT
On the next page you need to select the correct Operation system (usually this will be Windows 10 - 64-Bit Edition nowadays) and then the driver package you want to install. In general we recommend to go with the Recommended driver in the list which is also WHQL certificated. However, you can also go with the Optional version, if you want to give that one a try instead. Click on download and then run the installer.
On the following screens just go through the steps pointed out by the installer. If there is an option to select to perform a clean installation do select this option and make sure that you DO NOT deselect the Vulkan Runtime package.
After the installation went through, restart the machine.
If in addition to the AMD graphics device you also have a dedicated NVIDIA graphics device installed in your system, follow the steps in the next section (Installing NVIDIA drivers). If the AMD device is the only graphics device in your system, you are done and hopefully the game runs without problems for you again.
3c) Installing NVIDIA drivers
On the download page select the device installed in your system (as you noted down in the first step).
For instance, if you have an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 in your system select:
- Product Type: GeForce
- product Series: GeForce 10 Series
- Product: GeForce GTX 1080
- Operating System: Your operating system (usually: Windows 10 64-bit nowadays)
- Download Type: Game Ready Driver (GRD)
- Language: The language you want
Click on Search to get a list of the latest drivers for the combination.
On the next page, click the download button (confirm it once more by clicking Download on the next page again) and run the installer.
Windows is likely to ask for confirmation to run the installer. Just click on YES in the dialog.
Next you will have to select a location to extract the installer files to. Go with the default and click on OK.
A progress window will appear.
Wait until the process completed. Once done, the actual installer will start and initiates the system check:
Once that is complete, you can decide whether to install just the plain drivers or the drivers and the GeForce Experience package.Chose whatever you prefer and click on AGREE AND CONTINUE.
In the next dialog select Custom (Advanced) and click on NEXT.
In the following dialog all components should be selected. In addition to this, make sure to tick the option Perform a clean installation before clicking on NEXT again. Note: This option will reset any configuration/settings you might have done on your system. However, since you are doing the reinstallation of the graphics device drivers to fix some issue with the previous installation, setting this option is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. If you decide not to select it, feel free to give it a try without setting this option. If you have still trouble getting the game to start afterwards, we strongly suggest to follow the clean reinstallation instructions on this page a second time but then enable this setting here.
The installer will now install all components and your graphics device is likely be reset once (with your monitors going black for a few seconds). So don't be afraid, if this happens.
After the installation completed, you can adjust the settings on the final dialog to whatever you prefer before clicking on CLOSE.
Once done, please restart the machine.
Afterwards you should be all good now to start the game.