Arc A750 Vulkan Issues (No Man's Sky)

[Chipboard]

When trying to launch No Man's Sky, I get the attached message (image), and the game's log prints this, and only this:

"Vulkan Loader Message : vkCreateDevice: Failed to create device chain."

I have uninstalled previous AMD drivers (DDU) and clean-install Intel drivers, both stable and beta.

[Chipboard]

https://www.reddit.com/r/NoMansSkyTheGame/comments/nst210/the_game_has_encountered_an_error_and_needs_to/

Someone seems to have fixed this by reinstalling their Windows, but I would really like to be able to fix this without needing to do that.

Edit: I've now found a second place where reinstalling Windows has fixed a Vulkan related issue: https://community.intel.com/t5/Developing-Games-on-Intel/Game-engine-crashes-with-A750/m-p/1475554#M2001

Reinstalling Windows shouldn't be the accepted answer, we need to get to the bottom of this.

[Chipboard]

I found another similar incident, when trying to use Dolphin Emulator's Vulkan renderer, I get the following:

This is the third Vulkan based program I've been unable to start now.

[Hugo_Intel]

Hello Chipboard

Thank you for posting on the Intel Communities. I am sorry you are experiencing crashes when trying to start No Man's Sky on your system.

Please share with us the following information so we can further assist:

• What distribution service was the game downloaded from?
• Is Resizable Bar enabled on your system?
• Was the game working fine?
• Create a log file with the Intel® System Support Utility and attach it to your response to get more information on the hardware configuration. 

Best Regards,

Hugo O.

Intel Customer Support Technician

[Chipboard]

Q: What distribution service was the game downloaded from?
A: The game was downloaded from Steam.

Q: Is Resizable Bar enabled on your system?
A: Yes!

Q: Was the game working fine?
A: It was before I installed the A750.

Unfortunately, it is too late for me to get a log as I have freshly reinstalled windows. The game is working perfectly after a fresh install.
There is something from previous setups lingering around that messes with Intel's Vulkan support, somehow. We know that fresh Windows installs have fixed Vulkan related issues for many people at this point, so we have something to work with here.

(!)

Make this fact known amongst yourselves, Intel! This will be very important for retaining new customers! Find out how to fix this, it's not a one-time occurrence! New consumers are likely to assume that you don't support a few of their favorite games.

(!)

To reproduce this issue (my scenario):

1. Have an AMD RX580 GPU with Windows 11 installed.

2. Install AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition.

4. Allow AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition to install latest drivers.

5. Download, install, and play various Vulkan games.

6. Turn off computer, and swap AMD RX580 with Intel Arc A750.

7. Try to play Vulkan games again, it should not work.

The above steps are what I believe are necessary to replicate this issue (in my scenario).

[Hugo_Intel]

Hello Chipboard

Thank you for letting us know. It is good to know the issue is now resolved. Allow me to check with our team if there is any information related to this issue at the moment. I will post back once I have more information.

Best regards,

Hugo O.

Intel Customer Support Technician.

[Hugo_Intel]

Hello Chipboard

After checking this issue, our advice will be to continue uninstalling and reinstalling the Intel driver using Display Driver Uninstaller, however, this issue seems to be caused by leftovers or registry entries from third-party drivers that we would not be able to fix.

Best Regards,

Hugo O.

Intel Customer Support Technician.

[Hugo_Intel]

Hello Chipboard

I see there are no further questions related to this topic so we will proceed to close this thread. Feel free to open a new topic if you need further assistance. 

Best Regards,  

Hugo O. 

Intel Customer Support Technician. 

[KamikaZze]

@Hugo_Intel @Chipboard 

FYI guys. Don't know if it's still actual, but might be the case, please if you can, add this into issues solutions and knowledge base.

So here is the reason of this issue and actual solution, which doesn't involve things like reinstalling Windows, etc:

Many user applications such as Twitch Studio, are adding an additional overlay layers to Vulkan API. These layers are often badly managed and outdated, and as result, they're causing whole Vulkan API to stop working completely with Intel Arc drivers, causing issues like described with games which using Vulkan API, like No Man Sky. In case with Twitch Studio for example, the target Vulcan API level is 1.1, while Vulkan API Runtime shipped with Intel Arc drivers is of level 1.3, and Vulcan Runtime is not able to start while this overlay is present. On my system it was Twitch Studio overlay which was blocking Vulcan Runtime from working completely so no games which using Vulkan API was able to run.

So how to diagnose and fix the issue:

1. Open up Terminal from Administrator, for example by right-clicking on Start button and selecting "Windows Terminal (Administrator)"

2. In the Terminal window, input "vulkaninfo" and press Enter.

3. In normal case when everything works OK you should get a huge listing with Vulkan Instance Version, Instance Extensions, layers, capabilities, etc, etc. But when some of the layers which are present in the system break the functioning of Vulkan API, instead of this huge listing, all you get would be just 4-5 lines with errors which will mention what some layer requires runtime version 1.1 or 1.2 and so not able to start as version of runtime in the system is 1.3.

4. To solve this issue in this case, open Regedit and check these two keys

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Khronos\Vulkan\ImplicitLayers

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Khronos\Vulkan\ExplicitLayers

in this key you will see registry entries for all the third-party Vulkan layers present in the system as REG_DWORD parameters. Now all you need to do is simply find and delete the entries for layers which was mentioned in vulkaninfo errors and are blocking the Vulcan Runtime from functioning properly.

5. After doing so, again in the Terminal window, input "vulkaninfo" and press Enter. Now if you have deleted all the outdated layers, you should get a full Vulkan information listing. After that all games will be able to function.

[AlHill]

@KamikaZze   Just another ChatGPT poster.

Doc (not an Intel employee or contractor)
[Fear and the desire for control are primary motivators for shadow dwellers. ]

[KamikaZze]

Nope, I'm not a GPT poster. I'm just a software engineer who's writing the technical documentation very often.

--

One addition to my post above:

Note: in some cases offending layers mentioned there, might belong to existing older Vulkan Runtime installation which is still present in the system. In that case you also need to uninstall it, so what system only had one Vulkan Runtime, shipped with Intel Arc drivers.

[AlHill]

I call them like I see them.  And there is no point in you trolling for threads that are more than a year old.

Doc (not an Intel employee or contractor)
[Fear and the desire for control are primary motivators for shadow dwellers. ]

[KamikaZze]

Point is very simple: This issue is still actual.

My kid stumbled upon this issue just today, I've jumped to help, googled it up and was only been able to find solutions like "reinstall Windows" how in this thread, which is completely misleading.

So I did a small research and was able to find the reason and solution, but it's not mentioned anywhere at all. So users won't be able to find it. I've quickly documented it and replied here so what anyone who will got this issue was able to find the real solution via googling it up. It's the main purpose of technical communities in the Internet.