Illustrator will sometimes detect GPU and sometimes not

[Régis5FEB]

Hi,

i'm trying to troubleshoot this weird behaviour of illustrator 25 (same goes for 24, i tried).

At first boot it does detect my GPU, then after a few minutes it doesnt detect it and tells me i have no compatible GPU.

I'm working on a thinkpad P16 gen2 with nvidia RTX 1000ada.

I disabled the integrated intel graphics in the bios and cleaned completely the drivers with DDU,

I also tried the steps to delete the preferences in user/username/app data/adobe etc.... but it didnt work

i tried with latest (from today) nvidia drivers but didnt work, tried with latest lenovo drivers still same behaviour.

then sometimes i wait like 10 minutes and randomly launch illustrator and it does tell me it detects the nvidia GPU, sometimes not.

At launch it almost always detects it, then if i close illustrator and reopen it 2 minutes later it's not detected anymore then it will re detect it later (without me doing anything special on my side).

Could you please help me with that?

thanks a lot

[Anubhav M]

Hello @Régis5FEB,

I have a similar setup to yours and encountered the same problem. Kindly follow these suggestions and let me know if it helps:

- Close Illustrator
- Open Device Manager, and right-click on the 2 Display Adapters (Intel and NVIDIA) and choose the option to uninstall while checking the box for removing the drivers
After the drivers are removed, choose "Scan for Hardware changes" from the Action menu in Device Manager. This will install drivers from Windows Update.

- After Windows completes installing the drivers, download the latest drivers (Intel / NVIDIA / AMD) and install them. This time, do not choose the option for Clean Reinstall.

- Set the Graphics Preference to High-Performance for Illustrator (https://adobe.ly/3RzRw2W)

- Manually reset Illustrator's preferences. Go to the following location: \Users\%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\Adobe

Rename Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Illustrator 29 Settings folders to Adobe Illustrator.old and Adobe Illustrator - 29 Settings.old

- Restart your computer and relaunch Illustrator from Creative Cloud

Disclaimer: Please note that renaming preferences folders will remove all the custom settings, and Illustrator will launch with default settings. You can also save a backup of the folders, the location of which is mentioned above.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Anubhav

[Régis5FEB]

hi Anubhav,

it didn't work.

i did exactly what you said step by step (except for the fact that i have disable and uninstalled intel graphics inside the bios so there was only one GPU to uninstall/reinstall)

what should i try next?

[Anubhav M]

Hello @Régis5FEB,

Could you enable the iGPU from the BIOS settings again and then retry the steps to check if they help?

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Anubhav

[Régis5FEB]

i would rather not as the intel GPU had a bad effect on ram (the virtual windows manager.exe or something like this used 2go in the task manager even with latest intel drivers, while with igpu disabled it uses only 40mo)

[Anubhav M]

Hello @Régis5FEB,

Thanks for sharing the details. Kindly allow me some time to check this with the team.
Feel free to reach out if you have more questions or need assistance. We'd be happy to help.

Anubhav

[Régis5FEB]

hi again

for now, the only thing i found that could seem like a "solution" while waiting for a real fix, is that when illustrato doesnt use my GPU, i close it, then also close chrome and firefox and whatsapp as well, then launch illustrator again and until now it seems to always re launch with GPU detected.

maybe it's a ram issue (even though i have 32g ram) or it's something to do with the drivers i dont know but for now, closing those three apps then relaunching illustrator always seems to launch with gpu detected. I'll let you know if it happens to prove wrong later on. In the mean time maybe this info could help you work on the issue

[Anubhav M]

Hello @Régis5FEB,

Thanks for sharing the additional details. I will forward this to the product team and update this thread as I have more info.

Feel free to reach out if you have more questions or need assistance. We'd be happy to help.

Anubhav