DForce could not find a valid Open CL device. Black screen on updating Nvidia driver

amysparkles

Hi everyone,

 

A couple of months ago I tried DForce for the first time and loved it! Since then I'd been experimenting and seeing what it could do. Recently I bought lots of DForce items for Genesis 8 to play with.

Now suddenly, I cannot use DForce at all. I get an error 'Could not find a valid Open CL device' whenever I hit simulate. The only thing I could think of was a recent really huge Windows 10 update somehow messed with my settings. I Googled for possible solutions, and saw there's been previous conversations about this kind of thing happening after a Windows update. Most suggested reinstalling or updating the Nvidia driver. So that's what I tried.

I navigated to the Nvidia site, searched for the driver for my 1050TI card, and downloaded. Then I ran into disaster: Just as the installation began, my screen went totally black! Like, no text, no mouse cursor, nothing. Just cold, deep, lonely black! So of course I got a bit scared, panicking over what was happening. I waited and waited, wondering if that was just part of the installation process, but after about half hour, the screen was still black. So I forced a shut down by holding down the power button.

I restarted my computer. Thankfully everything seems to be back to how it was before the black screen. But I'm still getting the Open CL device error in DForce. I'm worried about attempting another driver install in case the same issue occurs, and I was told shutting down my computer like that could damage the hard drive!

So, any suggestions on what I should do? Should I just wait it out and do without DForce for a while until, hopefully, the next Windows update resolves the issue? Should I attempt another driver update? Is there another solution I could try?

I am planning on buying a new computer with an rtx 2080TI soon-ish, once Daz Studio 4.11 is stable released. But obviously, this whole suddenly unable to use Dforce and the black screen is worrying, especially if I get the same issues on any future new computer.   

Richard Haseltine

Shutting down shouldn't do any physical harm to the drive, and if it's formatted NTFS it shouldn't cause any soft issues. Still, I'd do a back up (always a good idea), restart Windows, and try installing again.