[X4-18] Startup Issue (unsupported Intel graphics device selected) Created: 03/Dec/18 Updated: 27/Jul/20
Status:	Open
Project:	X4 - Foundations
Component/s:	None
Affects Version/s:	1.0
Fix Version/s:	None

Type:

Bug

Priority:

Important

Reporter:

Stefan Hett

Assignee:

Stefan Hett

Resolution:

Unresolved

Votes:

Labels:

startuperror

Attachments:

config.xml

graphic_settings.png

Description

You landed on this page because the game detected an error to start the game.

We assume that the issue occurred because you are running the game on a machine (most likely a laptop) with multiple GPUs installed. In some cases the game picks the Intel (or another integrated) graphics card instead of a more powerful dedicated one and hence fails to start.

While the game should pick the more powerful card automatically, sometimes the auto detection fails.

Upgrading graphics card drivers (and doing a clean reinstallation of the current one)

One possible cause for picking the wrong card are driver issues. Hence, the first thing you should try is to upgrade the drivers for all of your installed cards and if you are running already the current drivers try a clean reinstallation of these as described on this page.
According to a user report the game failed to pick the correct card with NVidia drivers 389.12 but successfully picked the right one after upgrading to 391.25. Also issues with a driver installation proofed to be the cause for another user running into this problem who solved it by doing a clean reinstallation of his latest drivers.

Manually tweaking the config settings

If you have the latest drivers installed and that didn't help, the game allows you to manually select the card it should use.

WARNING

Note: The following instructions will change the gpu-selection behavior of the game. We DO NOT suggest to change this value unless absolutely necessary to be able to start the game. You should rather always prefer to keep that value at 0 (default - auto select). So only adjust the value if absolutely required and try to reset it to 0 with later patches (which might provide improvements for the GPU auto selection to better identify the proper graphics card without the need to explicitly set it through the config file.

locate the game's user directory (open the Windows explorer and go to %UserProfile%\Documents\Egosoft\X4)
if you run the game from Steam, there should be a subdirectory just consisting of numbers (like 123456789) which corresponds to your SteamID. Switch to that sub directory. (If you are running the game through GOG, skip this step).
make a backup of your existing config.xml file (if it exists)
replace the config.xml file with this version
try to start the game again
if the game doesn't start, open the config.xml file with your favorite text editor (Notepad will work just fine) and locate the line which reads: "<gpu>2</gpu>"
replace the number 2 with a 1
save the file
try to start the game again
if the game still doesn't work and you have more than 2 graphics cards installed, try to repeat the test and increment the number every time up to the number of graphics devices you have

Once you are in-game you can verify the selected graphics card in the options menu under graphic settings. "Graphics Card" there reports the selected graphics card:

Requesting further support

If you followed these steps and the game still doesn't run for you and still redirects you to this page, please contact us at prioritysupport@egosoft.com (Subject: "X4-18 - Intel startup error") with your DirectX diag and Vulkan info attached. This wiki entry explains how to create this information.

Alternative Workaround

If the above steps don't work, you can try to disable the integrated GPU in your system (and only have the dedicated GPU enabled). This can be done by disabling the integrated GPU in the Windows device manager. Doing that should enforce X4 to pick the right GPU on your system.

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