PC GZDoom broke my Laptop's Vulkan, can someone help?

[virtua_willdu]

I had this problem for a while since I've tried played GZDoom on my laptop.

One day, while I was configuring my settings while using the Vulkan as my render, GZDoom suddenly crashed on me and I was confused on what happened, but little did I know, when I tried playing the PC version of Halo 1 from my save, the graphics just glitch out, appearing stretched. It wasn't the only game affected by this as the two IdTech3 games that had Vulkan running source ports I had: quake3e vulkan and taystjk would just crash after some time of play showing the "VK_ERROR_DEVICE_LOST" error, Roblox was affected too but only through screen tearing which I was able to fix using the Intel Graphics Software (that also fixed my display's colors, I was getting used to my laptop). My laptop still runs fine and the emulators that I had (or once had) that have a Vulkan renderer as an option: DuckStation (removed), PCSX2 (removed), PPSSPP (I'm using it on a different and weaker laptop), and Flycast (I'm having a Dreamcast fever and it's the only one staying on my main laptop) but while my laptop has been doing fine (even after my data, though not all of it, was wiped due to me trying to solve the random crashes that I had with TES: Oblivion that took me three "BOOT_DEVICE_NOT_FOUND" errors for it to be solved, though, I feel like it was for the better as I feel like some weights involving my laptop was lifted from me), my Vulkan problems still lingered in my head and sure enough: it happened as I was having some minor texture issues on Flycast standalone with Quake 3 Dreamcast (I really love that version and have completed custom extensions of that version on my YouTube channel) using Vulkan. Its probably a minor issue and was solved using DirectX 11 but I worry that it may be a harbinger for what's to come if I don't fix it.

Upon my search, I was able to find a Vulkan diagnostic tool and using it, I think I kind of get the gist of what's happening but I'm no laptop expert, so I'm really asking for help if possible. (I won't be online however till around 7 or 8pm so please give suggestions till then.)

 

[thecrow2313]

BIOS up to date? Any new iGPU drivers? Windows up to date?

 

[qw90700]

Windows 11 is so problematic I fixed tons of Windows 11 PCs for my side gig for years. It's a feature that even Windows 11 Calculator may crash due to DirectX 12 error and display Green Screen of Death lolol. But hey, customers having a problem is a solution to my wallet!!!

So Windows 11 problem may arise in every update that make people cannot play games for a while until another update and so on. Not updating it is equally bad as updating it. Naturally your drivers should be ok for your Windows 11 version and vice versa. Windows 11 is really pretty much Vista at this point lol.

But the problem may be also about how Windows 11 may behave bad with this specific laptop. Laptops itself already problematic!!!

There can be some troubleshooting to make but my answers would be the same: Completely delete your GPU drivers and reinstall them to the most updated one. Naturally as Windows updated your GPU driver should be updated too. However the thing is your CPU is an APU, but it make me question your laptop may have a seperate GPU (simply put). Then check if your laptop has a GPU or it just have an APU.

As Windows updated the more your motherboard may need bios update so check on that. I hope you didn't just take a laptop came with Windows 10 and directly updated to Windows 11 even without checking bios updates.

If everything else fails just re-install Windows fresh.

If it still fail then it's a hardware problem that it cannot be fixed unless it's heat issue. As heat increases hardware works less stable and over time hardware gets "damaged" so much it start to cannot do its job because it lacks what it needs anymore due to physical change. Simple heat issue is fixable by preventing the system from overheating but complex heat issue already caused permenant damage that making the hardware trash.

In the end it doesn't seem like the issue caused by the game but it was a coincidence, if not the game perhaps tried to use GPU but not APU despite the system was set to only use APU. It can cause confusion to your system but this confusion should have been cleared when the PC turned off completly. However some people prefer to hibernate their PC which can cause problems itself. I would rather recommend people to completly turn off PC and turn off any setting that does BS stuff for "fast boot" because it leaves data in your storage device and the PC never really turned off which can use security risk to unstability risk of the system enough to corrupt your whole PC. It's especially a problem when system requires a fresh boot but this BS would use even chaotic state of the system for fast boot ruining the system further. Not to mention as the computer runs more without turned off the more it gets unstable.

So if you have a GPU alongside with an APU you gotta properly set which one your system supposed to use. Check gameprofile stuff of your GPU that they may cause contradicting behavior to PC. If you have a GPU it's probably Nvidia and its profile may cause problems.

IDK what else to say. This topic can only continue on what kind of troubleshooting you followed and what they caused.

 

[secreto7]

There are much things that could be the problem, but the probable ones are:

- GPU drivers are corrupted and need clean reinstall to the latest version

- Check that Windows Update doesn't change your manually installed driver for an old or faulty version they force install regardless of what you have

- Check that Windows do not install
"OpenCL™, OpenGL®, and Vulkan® Compatibility Pack", it gives problems

 

[Kamako]

Hello

Try following the instructions found here:

Supported APIs for Intel® Graphics

Information on supported APIs for Intel® Graphics Drivers, including DirectX*, OpenGL*, Vulkan* and OpenCL* versions.

www.intel.com

This will help you identify which drivers you need, and the direct links to the safe sites that host those API's.

I would advise against deleting anything from your device. Driver installers are usually quite robust nowadays, and should automatically supersede your previous drivers once installed.

 

[qw90700]

I would advise against deleting anything from your device. Driver installers are usually quite robust nowadays, and should automatically supersede your previous drivers once installed.

Honestly there is no "appropriate way for noobs" way to handle a PC. The only decent way to uninstal APU/GPU drivers is safe mode -> Display Driver Uninstaller (DDU) -> boot into normal mode -> install driver -> restart -> continue living your life. If you won't do then better don't use a PC because your life will be an unnecessary suffering that this is exactly how I make money from my side gig thanks to lazy people lolol.

 

[Kamako]

Honestly there is no "appropriate way for noobs" way to handle a PC...

I get what you're saying, but sometimes the simplest solution is the correct one.

The website will tell virtua_willdu what their recommended graphics drivers are, and then after downloading and installing the most up to date versions of those drivers, upon restarting their device they will know for sure whether the issue is solely due to a corrupted/outdated driver.

 

[afureru]

damn doom is a killer triple a nowadays huh

 

[qw90700]

I get what you're saying, but sometimes the simplest solution is the correct one.

The website will tell virtua_willdu what their recommended graphics drivers are, and then after downloading and installing the most up to date versions of those drivers, upon restarting their device they will know for sure whether the issue is solely due to a corrupted/outdated driver.

However due to the issues because things are not normal we may expect a simple setup way of "updating" may cause further issues.

If the topic was about life simple solutions can solve many things but when the topic is an issue of a computer with "unknown" caıuse for a problem due to it can be anything we gotta follow simple steps for straight to the point necessary solutions to follow. It involves making sure of the problem and being safe while trying to solve it.

For example even "setup fresh install" is not really a fresh install. They still leave leftover files they shouldn't that may be the cause of the problem from the start and therefore often the problems carried onto the next update that sometimes these problems gets bigger like a snowball and after a few update they just boom cause the killer issue so worst it can further damage the system.

If you were a medical doctor when just someone sneezed a lot and feel "too tired" you would give antibiotics and after a week they would arrest you for doing a poor job because whatever simple solution you bought killed the patient. Congratulations, Murphy's Law wins against Occam's Razor lolol.

 

[Kamako]

...Murphy's Law wins against Occam's Razor

Most of the time, I agree. For what it's worth, I think virtua_willdu should try following your instructions about booting in safe mode and using the built-in driver uninstaller. It just might not be necessary for them to do that as their first very option.

 

[petran79]

if your gpu isn't brand new, stick to older more stable gpu drivers.

In my case nvidia 575 drivers would cause issues in Dolphin on Vulkan, where fps would stuck to 48 fps, probably because of gsync 100hz monitor.

Now I am at 556, which seems to be the fastest too. Have to set swap chain mode to native though for some emulator to play at 60fps.

 

[qw90700]

Most of the time, I agree. For what it's worth, I think virtua_willdu should try following your instructions about booting in safe mode and using the built-in driver uninstaller. It just might not be necessary for them to do that as their first very option.

Well yeah, first I would do is to check if the laptop has a GPU which often causes conflicts when it also has an APU. However either way safe driver reinstallation is necessary step to take eventually and when everything else fails fresh Windows install becomes necessity.

Another thing is in my experience 99% of people who having an issue never cares about troubleshooting steps, they want "one and only answer". First they will be stubborn on "workarounds" to somehow magically make PC work without problems and then their direct solution is driver update or fresh OS reinstall. You may fix the issue in a detailed and advanced way that's simple for "some people" but for most people this is rocket science. That's why I avoided listing too many driver setting options regarding preferred GPU usage to Vulkan settings, even factory reset which may very well solve the problem, however overall what really needs to be done is not really solving an issue but solving many possible issues therefore fresh driver reinstall properly is necessity here that can solve many problems and most importantly avoid tons of problems too.

When a system of anything causes a problem the simplest solution is sometimes "too complex" because it's a system. Systems are complex. That's don't see it in "simple" or "complex" way, to solve system problems you need to straight shoot into the heart of possible problems because this is what needs to be done. No pain, no gain. It would be nice to have every problems come with simple solutions but sometimes life doesn't work like that.

Honestly I would be stubborn about using Windows 10 at least and totally skip using Windows 11. Windows 10 had issues but not in "core" way. Pretty much Windows 11 is a fail as much as Vista was in core level yet Windows 11 is better equipped on avoiding even simple problems. Until Windows 11 really got stable they would release Windows 12 that would be relatively way more stable than Windows 11 ever would.

So if the problem had happened to a PC I was given as a present I would directly just install Windows 10 because I know either way Windows 11 will find a way to BS me as if Microsoft wanted to introduce Green Screen of Death as if "we worked so hard changing the color and we want you to experience it and we would be sad if you had forgot we updated it as a feature!!!" lolol.

 

[RageBurner]

So if the problem had happened to a PC I was given as a present I would directly just install Windows 10 because I know either way Windows 11 will find a way to BS me as if Microsoft wanted to introduce Green Screen of Death as if "we worked so hard changing the color and we want you to experience it and we would be sad if you had forgot we updated it as a feature!!!" lolol.

Don't forget the very appropriate and useful MS product placements in green screens of death shown in insider builds. How progressive!

 

[virtua_willdu]

Darn, I did forget to share the specs of my laptop's processor though since I was in a hurry:

Laptop's name:

HP Laptop 15-dy5131wm (8R0M1UA)​

CPU Processor: 12th Gen Intel(R) Core i3 1215U
Processor Speed: 1.20 GHz
Cores: 6
Threads: 8
System RAM: 8 GB
System RAM Speed: 3200 MHz
System RAM Type: DDR4
Integrated GPU: Intel(R) UHD Graphics
Xe-cores: 4
Usable Video Memory: 4GB
Direct 3D API Version: 12.0
Shader Model Version: 6.7
Vulkan API Version: 1.3.297
OpenGL API Version: 4.6.0
OpenCL API Version: 3.0

I have no separate GPU, but this laptop's CPU has been good to me even after my Vulkan gave me problems, playing PC games from early 2010's like the PC version of Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen at near 60 fps at 720p and up to almost half PS3 emulateable with RPCS3, though, the CPU struggles with my favorite PS3 games. (Xenia was problematic at the time I tried it with Fight Night Round 3, it was at the low single digits fps range even in the menu while RPCS3 could carry me up to the mid 20s fps range in-game and a full 60 fps in menu.)

Though, following what qw90700 suggested and said, I think I should leave the Vulkan problem alone since I'm not too good on this stuff and just use my laptop as it is. And really, the PC games that I have (SW JK: Jedi Academy~OpenJK, Quake 3~Quake3e, and Monster [A 2005 or 2006 Doujin 2D Fighting Game]) runs like a dream on this hardware! Same goes for the things that I use outside of games, loading in real fast and powering my dreams (like my sprite on my avatar, a tried recreation of a character made Phantasy Star Portable 2 Infinity!)

Thank you everyone but I guess that if this main laptop of mine goes down, then I try getting another one as good and cheap as this, though I could still fall back on my secondary, weaker Windows 10 laptop that I recently was able scavenge which may cost me a lot if I want it to be more than serviceable (It's an 2019 entry-level laptop called the Stream 14 Laptop with a AMD A4-9120C CPU with 4GB of RAM that seems to perform slowly than what seen in online reviews. Maybe it's been a while since my brother had used it during its peak performance?).

 

[Rocket2049]

simply put, try removing and fully reinstalling the graphics drivers (yourself, not through windows update or whatever)
and try using a previous graphic driver version. even nvidia has screwed me enough times i had to downgrade back (especially for emulation stuff)

 

[qw90700]

Though, following what qw90700 suggested and said, I think I should leave the Vulkan problem alone since I'm not too good on this stuff and just use my laptop as it is.

I'm glad it has no "separate GPU" because it made things very simple but it kinda made the issue more serious due to a possible hardware issue.

I understand but as a warning I may say if it's a driver issue laptop may get damaged and turn into useless state relatively anytime from now to a year ago because this Vulkan issue shouldn't be taken as "just one aspect of the issue" because the source of this issue has the potential to eventually damage the hardware, or just specific aspect of Vulkan somehow problematic. Just a FYI.

But if you wanna try a possible fix you may follow this simple steps or not: Go into safe mode -> uninstall your GPU driver via Display Driver Uninstaller (DDU) which is a program does a great job at it and very necessary to use for uninstalling such drivers ->restart your PC and boot it normally (so no need for safe mode now) -> install the GPU driver -> restart your PC. This may be only thing that would fix the issue for overall "treatment" because directly the issue seems to be a problematic driver therefore I wouldn't advise you to keep using problematic drivers.