Quick workaround for the "no DirectX GPU found" issue (Windows)

[peorg]

Some of us Arc owners are plagued by the problem, that the GPU driver will at some point "forget" its DirectX feature levels. The result is that DirectX dependent games and apps will not run, giving error messages like "couldn't initialize GPU", "no DirectX compatible graphics device found" and the like.

Usually this error is mitigated by rebooting the system, but that takes a bit of time and can also interrupt work. Unfortunately, simply resetting the GPU driver via Win+Ctrl+Shift+B usually does not work. Also reinstalling the same GPU driver only sometimes does the trick.

But I discovered, that there is a simple workaround that is also reliable. I can verify this method for Windows 11, but it should also work in Windows 10 and for all Intel Arc dedicated GPUs (A380, A750, A770). It will likely also work with integrated Xe GPUs.

1) If the error occurs open the Windows device manager

2) find your Intel Arc GPU (listed unter graphic cards)

3) right click and select "deactivate device" + confirm

4) the screen will go black for a moment and then return, as your system switches to the Microsoft Basic Display Adapter driver. Arc Control will show an API error.

5) right click the GPU again and select "activate device"

6) the screen will go black again and then return, as the regular Arc driver is loaded again. Arc Control will be back to normal too. The feature levels should now be back.

7) to confirm this click the start button or press the Windows key, type "dxdiag" and press Enter

on the second tab (display) confirm that the entry "feature levels" is not empty. It should show "12_2, 12_1,...", which are the feature levels that are queried by DirectX applications upon start to determine if a compatible GPU is present.

My educated guess is that the cause of the bug is related to how the driver communicates  with the DirectX subsystem of Windows as apparently at some point the communication just seems to break down. I do hope that Intel can provide a fix for that issue soon.

[Hugo_Intel]

Hello peorg

Thank you for posting on the Intel® ARC™ Graphics Communities. I am sorry that you are experiencing an issue with the Intel® Arc™ GPU not being detected by the Operating System.

We appreciate that you take the time to share this workaround with the community. We also wanted to let you know that we are actively investigating and working on this issue to come up with a fix as one of our top priorities, at the moment there is no estimated time for a fix to be released but in case you want to check the status later on you can reference the Bug ID 14018789847.

Best Regards,

Hugo O.

Intel Customer Support Technician.

[peorg]

Thank you Hugo. I hope the bug will soon be resolved.

I would like to add something to my initial posting, as I cant edit it anymore:

In rare instances DirectX levels wont return immediately and a second deactivation and reactivation of the GPU might be necessary. Had this happen once, so usually it should work at the first try.

[Hugo_Intel]

Hello peorg

Thank you for sharing the information. This thread will remain open so you or other community members that might experience the same issue can post on the thread, however, since we are actively investigating this issue we will no longer monitor the thread. Please look forward to future driver updates that should contain the fix for the issue and we want to thank you once again for sharing this workaround with the community.

Best Regards,

Hugo O.

Intel Customer Support Technician.

[WolfRocket]

Not sure if this helps but the issue seems to be related to running out of memory as it tends to happen if I have too many programs demanding vram causing black screens multiple times, Windows event viewer calls it an application hang which was event 1002, an event called HAL occurred which is event ID 15. No idea what it means but they might be related. Crash occurred while running GTAV, Black Desert at the same time.

my GPU is an Intel arc a770 with 8GB of vram.