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.
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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.
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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.
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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".
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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 w/o 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.
After having uninstalled the AMD Software (in case it was present on your device), you should restart the machine.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).
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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.
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3a) Installing Intel drivers
On the download page select the device installed in your system (as you noted down in the first step).
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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).
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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).
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