Failed to create a graphics device

[KATANA]

I've seen all the other threads addressing this problem in the past on this forum and elsewhere with a variety of suggested solutions and things that have worked for other people, none of them have worked for me, so far I've tried:

- uninstalling nvidia drivers, reboot, re-installing current nvidia drivers, rebooting again
- running DXSetup.exe inside steam/steamapps/common/Stellaris/_CommonRedist/DirectX
- turning off SLI
- installing older nvidia drivers for my 1080s, including a version from last month and a version from Dec 2017
- various settings.txt tweaks (lowering resolution, turning off fullscreen, adding adapter=1 to the end, making new blank file)
- closing and re-opening steam
- running steam and/or game in administrator mode
- verifying game files
- deleting and reinstalling the whole game

None of it has worked. The error is always the same: "Failed to create a graphics device. Exiting."

Attached to this thread is the system.log and DxDiag (with manufacturer/model redacted). The system.log file is the only one that generates in the logs folder when the error appears, i.e. all other logs are 0 KB.

Any help would be much appreciated, I know this is not an entirely uncommon issue but I've tried just about everything else I could find online, making a post here is all I've got left. Thanks in advance.

 

[gigau]

What about the Settings.txt file (\Documents\Paradox Interactive\Stellaris\ directory) ?

 

[KATANA]

Attached is the settings.txt file.

It was originally set to fullscreen on, 3840x2160, and didn't have the adapter=1 line at the end. But, I played around with those settings a bit as part of my troubleshooting. I also tried blanking the file entirely. Still got the same error every time.

 

[AndrewT]

Are you running an app called Duet Display? If so unload that before you run the game.

 

[KATANA]

I did have Duet Display, and of all the crazy things lol, this was it. I would've never thought of it if you hadn't said it, so thank you.

As it turns out, it doesn't matter whether Duet Display is running and connected, running and disconnected (i.e. in the background), or not running at all--simply having the software installed was enough to trigger the error every time. The only solution was to completely uninstall Duet Display and restart the machine.

Everything seems to be working fine now. I guess I'll just have to find an alternative to DD that doesn't cause this strange issue. Thanks much again.

 

[AndrewT]

Actually you should report it to them; as a background app it is up to them to keep out of the way of foreground apps.