Illustrator (26.3.1) Compatible GPU not displayed despite dedicated GPU present - Potential fix

[MG_Sean]

Hello all,

I am sharing this potential fix in hopes that it will help those who are experiencing the same issue I was going through. This might be a very specific issue relating to my PC, but if you've tried every possible suggestion recommended here and everywhere else, give this a try. 

Let me start with a brief description of my PC. I have a custom desktop with a Threadripper 3970X, 256GB of RAM, and dual 3090 Ti with NVLink enabled and several nvme drives running Windows 11 with latest updates. In brief, my PC never had any issues with any of the Adobe suite programs.

My problem started when a troubled, unrelated software kept causing my PC to crash. After resolving that very issue, I proceeded to continue with my work in Illustrator. I quickly realized that something was wrong when zooming in and out was extremely sluggish. Checking my Performance settings in Preferences, I found out that my GPUs were not detected and it states "Compatible GPU not displayed". 

I tried every possible solutions out there other than reinstalling Windows. Rebooted PC, reinstalled drivers, reinstalled Illustrator, Used older version of Illustrator, deleted preferences, etc, and nothing was working. However, the oddest thing was that Photoshop can see my GPUs and worked just fine. My PC in general was working just fine as well, so I was stumped. After nearly hours of sleuthing around the internet, I stumbled upon a post somewhere suggesting to check if MSinfo32.exe (System Information) is working properly. Lo behold, MSinfo32 was not working properly and was not able to pool in my PC's resources, including Hardware information. I'm guessing Illustrator uses MSinfo32 to provide it with available hardware information and to decide whether a compatible GPU is available. 

I proceeded trying to figure out a way to fix MSinfo32 and reset its repository. I tried many methods to do this but all of them failed to get MSinfo32 working properly again, until I came upon this post. It is really old, back from 2008, but it works! Works really well actually.

https://forums.techguy.org/threads/solved-cant-collect-information.668985/post-5920976

Follow its instructions carefully (I would just copy-paste from @echo on till :End) into a notepad file, save it as fixwmi.cmd and change file type to all files before hitting Save. Before running the command file you just created, make sure to close your Services windows as well as System Information (if either are open). If you have any anti virus software or MalwareBytes, shut them down first. 

After all of the above is done, right click on fixwmi.cmd and run it as administrator. A command window will open and run through a ton of things. DO NOT close or end the command process until it shuts itself! The commands is instructed to shut itself after completion, so if it sits there for several seconds doing nothing, leave it alone! It's making some necessary changes so let it do its thing. Once it's complete, it'll disappear. You can proceed to check MSinfo32 and see if it now successfully pooled your hardware information. If it does, restart Illustrator, and it now should see your GPU again.

Hopefully this will help someone out there 🙂

[Alexandre Becquet]

Hello, thanks for sharing @MG_Sean I hope it will help

[MG_Sean · Accepted solution]

Thanks @Alexandre Becquet! Please feel free to add tags to this or pin it in the appropriate sections of the forum. This is my first time posting here so I'm not familiar with where posts should go.

[Alexandre Becquet]

Hello, i can't pin it, not enough autorisation but i'll see that 😉

[spurdosparde316]

this should be easier to find, this worked for me.

[defaultdn2r3iyzqcca]

This worked for me.

Illustrator stopped detecting my GPU from one day to the next and updating drivers/restarting did nothing.

My System Information did not display things correctly/could not load certain entries, so I created the fixwmi.cmd file as outlined and it ran to completion and the issue was fixed. Both System Information and Illustrator are now back to normal.

Many thanks for this solution and finding out that these issues are linked. I would have never made that connection! 

[olkuszanin]

Thank you very much, that's how I got rid of the problem, it works 100%