Godot stops responding then after end task: "Unable to initialize Video Driver"

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:bust_in_silhouette: Asked By elbow6677

Hello, i’ve been happily learning Godot off and on again for over a year. Only recently in the last week or so I have noticed an issue. It was shortly after downloading the 4.0 alpha 10 Godot would stop responding, it would not recover on its own. I wasn’t even doing anything other than switching back in forth between the web browser and the editor following a tutorial. After ending task on the editor, and trying to restart I get the error message:
Unable to initialize Video driver
Your video card driver does not support any of the supported OpenGL versions.
Please update your drivers or if you have a very old or Integrated GPU upgrade it.

reboot fixes it temporarily, until it happens again. Then I must reboot to regain functionality.

Is there any chance the 4.0 Alpha changed something on my laptop? maybe updated a registry key or a file somewhere? I have since tried to update my drivers, I cleared the files under my windows profile thinking maybe something was modified. I deleted the alpha editor and have returned to using 3.4.4. The problem is sporadic and I can’t reliably reproduce it but it always happens eventually… Nothing else has a problem, no other games are crashing or hanging, only the Godot editor seems affected.

Currently using 3.4.4 stable
I have a Dell Inspiron 15 gaming laptop from 2016
it has Nvidia 960M graphics.
16GB memory
Intel i5
Windows 10 Home
Unfortunately I don’t have another windows computer to test on. I have a new MacBook pro, but I don’t think that’s a proper comparison…

Nvidia 960M or Nvidia GTX 960M

Beatrix | 2022-08-01 15:48

Hello,
I use the same version 3.4.4, even if it happens to me also with previous godot version, and I have the same problem.

My video card is NVIDIA GeForce MX250 and I have noticed this problem since i upgraded from windows 10 to windows11.
The only fix I found is reboot the OS like you.
It’s definitely not the video card’s fault, otherwise it would never work. I guess that’s something that goes wild after a while.
I don’t give up and I keep looking for a solution also because the problem is very annoying.
I also tried to run godot with:
godot.exe --editor --video-driver GLES2
Without success.

cybergodot | 2022-08-04 08:43

confirmed this issue persists in version 3.5

elbow6677 | 2022-08-08 22:29

Today I tried this:

Godot_v3.5-stable_win64.exe --verbose -d -quiet

The output that I see is:

Godot Engine v3.5.stable.official.991bb6ac7 - https://godotengine.org
ERROR: Error initializing GLAD
at: is_viable (drivers/gles3/rasterizer_gles3.cpp:141)

maybe this can we help finding any solution

cybergodot | 2022-08-09 21:45

Yoo I made an account just so I could comment on this, but I had a similar issue with my version of Godot too. But I saw online that changing the graphics performance preference for Godot can help, and had some success for my version. If your computer uses two graphics cards (for example, an Intel and an NVIDIA), try going into your preferences and changing it so that Godot uses the integrated graphics card (for me it was Intel).

To do so, go to Settings > System > Display, and then click ‘Graphics settings’ on the bottom. From there you should see a category called ‘Graphics performance preference’, where you can then select your Godot application and choose which graphics card your system will use when running it. I hope that’s helpful!

-Ruth

Ruthenium | 2022-11-19 00:45

@Ruthenium Thank you so much! This solved the problem for me.

tillmonk | 2022-11-20 18:15

:bust_in_silhouette: Reply From: cybergodot

At the moment I installed OpenGL Extension Viewer from www.realtech-vr.com and that is helpful for get more informations about the video driver you have installed in your machine. Infact I notice that I have to upgrade my Intel video graphics driver and I did.
Now, after that, the Godot can start again.
I also installed the last directx …linked always in the software that I mentioned.
Good Luck for now…let me know if this helped.

It seemed solved but has now reappeared.
Simply leaving Godot open without doing anything for a short time the bug shows up and the only thing to do is to restart the pc.
I have all the updated drivers and also the operating system.

cybergodot | 2022-08-15 06:44

+1

Same problem and symptoms with Godot 3.5

When is Idle in the background for ‘X’ time and then I go back to it then it stops and this problems appears until OS is rebooted or causing Windows to crash.

Side note.
I had some windows update (can’t recall specific notes on that) but when I updated Blender to the recent version I had similar symptoms with the video driver. The solution was to move the opengl32.dll to the directory where the program was installed.

JU-2094 | 2022-09-19 03:51

Thanks for responding and offers of suggestions.
I have since built a new Pc and am using Godot 3.5 and no longer having the issue on the new pc, I have considered reverting drivers on my laptop… I’m hesitant to try the Godot 4 beta out of fear the same thing will happen to my pc that happened to my laptop. Today I was going through a Material Maker tutorial (made with Godot) and the exact same thing happened. so its something related to Godot and how it interacts with the driver. I can’t believe there aren’t any tools for troubleshooting this. it would be different if every game I used crashed on me but this is Godot specific issue. there should be an error log somewhere.

elbow6677 | 2022-09-25 00:34