Unreal Engine 5.4 / 5.5 / 5.6 crashing on startup – GPU Crashed or D3D Device Removed (RTX 4050 Laptop)

Vashisthvrex
Sun, 31 Aug 2025 13:36:43 +0000
Getting Started & Setup

Hello,

I recently tried running Unreal Engine 5.4, 5.5, and 5.6 on my laptop, but every version crashes immediately on startup with the error:

GPU Crashed or D3D Device Removed.
Check log for GPU state information.

My system specs:

Laptop: HP Omen by HP Gaming Laptop 16-wd0xxx

CPU: Intel Core i5-13420H (13th Gen)

GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4050 Laptop GPU (6GB VRAM, DirectX 12 Ultimate supported)

RAM: 16 GB

OS: Windows 11 Home Single Language 64-bit (Build 26100)

DirectX version: 12

NVIDIA driver: 32.0.15.8097 (tested both Game Ready & Studio drivers)

What I tried so far:

Forcing DX11 / DX12 using shortcut flags (-d3d11, -d3d12)

Forcing Vulkan (-vulkan) — but Vulkan runs extremely slow

Disabled NVIDIA overlay (GeForce Experience)

Set GPU preference to “High Performance (RTX 4050)” in Windows Graphics Settings

Clean reinstall of NVIDIA drivers (DDU)

Reinstalled Unreal Engine 5.4, 5.5, 5.6

Issue:
Games like Cyberpunk 2077 and World War Z run fine on this GPU, but Unreal Engine always crashes with the D3D Device Removed error.
This problem only started in the last couple of months — earlier Unreal 5.6 used to launch fine.

Any help on how to fix this would be really appreciated!
(Logs available if needed — I can upload the crash folder from Documents\Unreal Engine\Saved\Crashes).

Thank you

2 posts - 2 participants