Game will not start - "Graphics initialization failed..."

Have been playing D4 every day since S8 started and new today the game will not launch.

From the character select screen and I click Play, I get a pop-up dialog with this error message:

“Graphics initialization failed, please ensure that your drivers are up to date and no other 3D applications or games are running and try again”

I updated my NVIDIA driver (which I do every couple weeks anyway) and still get same error message. Game was working fine as recent as last evening.

Edit:

Now I am getting the Fenris dialog box with “The application encounrteered an unxpected error.” Here is the latest report ID from that screen: 0EBC023C-EA70-4477-A1AD-65C56FC22EC8

Here is pastbin from FenrisDebug.txt: I 2025.05.05 14:28:12.729246 0 [Crash] User defined symbols path: D:\Diablo4\Dia - Pastebin.com

System info: Lenovo Legion Pro 5 16IRX8
Graphics: Nvidia RTX 4070

Tried Scan and Repair from battlenet launcher, it reported no repair required.

Looking at your FenrisDebug.txt your crash appears to be related to a few possible things:

  • GPU driver issue
  • overlay enabled (GeForce for example)
  • VSync/GSync issue

The best and recommended NVIDIA driver with the least amount of issues is 566.36 and it’s recommended to use DDU in Windows Safe Mode to fully remove the current driver and any remnants before installing previous drivers.

DDU: (instructions are also on their site for proper usage)
https://www.wagnardsoft.com/display-driver-uninstaller-DDU-

Download 566.36 before the DDU process so you have it ready.
https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/drivers/details/237719/

Before booting out of Safe Mode it’s recommended to have your internet disconnected so Windows does not try to download a driver for you.

Boot back into Windows

Install the NVIDIA driver then reboot

Thanks for the info. I was in the process of reinstalling the latest using DDU when I saw this. If that doesn’t work, I’ll try going back to 566.36 to see if it works. Will report back here when done, either way.

Sounds good. There could be other issues, but the newer NVIDIA drivers are buggy and it’s very possible Windows auto updated yours upon a reboot/startup.

Also, there’s a way to prevent Windows updates from including driver updates. I didn’t include that info here as it could potentially block other updates (requires a registry adjustment), but keep this in mind and Google search it.

If the 566.36 works for you, keep that driver in a safe place for future reference as NVIDIA makes older drivers unavailable after some time.

Clean reinstall of the latest NVIDIA driver (576.28) worked for me, at least for now. I downloaded 566.36 just in case, so if it fails again, I’ll roll back to that. Thanks again!

YW, glad it worked. I guess we can just assume an auto install by Windows messed it up and you needed to DDU a fresh install?

I don’t know for sure. I do not have “Receive updates for other Microsoft products” on in my windows update settings, and the only windows updates I received recently listed in the update history were the antivirus definitions for windows defender, but who knows? I suppose it could have been a corrupt file in the nvidia directory or something like that.

this ‘error’ persists no matter what troubleshooting one follows

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