"a graphics card and driver with support for OpenGL 3.3 or higher is required" error on 3.0.1

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1

Hi :slight_smile: I’m using Blender 3.0.1, I used it earlier today, now when I try to launch it I get the infamous “a graphics card and driver with support for OpenGL 3.3 or higher is required”.
I hadn’t even turned off my pc in between. What was different? There was a pending windows update (I’m on win10), and I attached my wacom graphics screen.
I ran the windows update, I’ve made sure that Blender is using my RTX 2070 card both in nvidia control panel, and in windows settings. I’ve reinstalled the Nvidia driver, both through Geforce Experience and when that didn’t work manually by downloading the latest driver myself.
I’ve tried to repair blender (running the install file and choosing repair), I’ve removed blender and installed it again.
I still get the error - I seem to be unable to run Blender now :confused:
Googling the problem you’ll find a ton of youtube videos telling you to replace a dll file, and the have a link to a google drive with said dll file… I’m not really keen on doing that though - seems like a pretty insecure thing to do.
Does anyone have any ideas on what I can do/try next? Thanks in advance!

2

Have you tried removing the wacom tablet/screen?

3

Hi rboxman, thanks for the quick reply. Yeah, I did try removing it - unfortunately it makes no difference.

4

Hmm, unsure then. This error most often occurs for either laptops going through docking stations to external monitors or on PCs with multiple graphics devices (either GPUs or similar) and blender attempts to startup on the non primary display. Might have to wait and see if other folks have any ideas.

5

Thanks rboxman - that’s the problem!
So I tried removing the wacom again. This time I had an additional external monitor attached as well, and now blender starts! I had forgot that using blender earlier today I also used the external monitor.

To recap (and I just tested):
Starting Blender on just the laptop nothing attached: I get the error.
Starting Blender with the wacom graphics display: I get the error.
Starting blender with just the external monitor on: Blender starts!

Should I report this error/bug somewhere?