You may have suffered from the feeling of frustration when you open to playing the game Skyrim and then run into the “Failed to Initialize Renderer” error. Most of the time the error occurs when the game is not able to open the game in selected screen resolution. This can happen mainly due to 2 reasons – either the graphic drivers of your hardware are not updated/are corrupt or the games file is corrupt.
Now you must be wondering then what is rendering? Rendering is the automated computer process of generating a photorealistic i.e. 2D or 3D images. Render is displaying such a model. As soon as you launch the game, the game checks your video card details and checks whether it is capable of supporting these processes or not.
When it receives the information. It decides which things to initiate and which things to reject. When the game is unable to read your video card properly, the error of “Failed to Initialize Renderer” occurs.
How to Fix Skyrim Failed To Initialize Renderer
Don’t worry, we are here to give you some solid solutions to eradicate this error and let you return to your fun-filled playing time.
Solution 1: Power Cycling your Computer
First Let’s not completely make technical changes to the game or your graphics hardware. We are advising you to completely power cycle your computer and check whether it fixes the problem or not.
Turning off your computer completely and then starting it again is called power cycling. By doing so, an electronic device restarts its sets of configuration parameters or recuperate from an unresponsive state or module. All the network configurations are also reset when you do so as they all get lost when you turn off your computer.
To power cycle, your computer, turn it off completely, remove all the attached wires, and even carefully remove the battery and detach it. Press the power button for a minute and then wait for 2-3 minutes. After what seems like prolong waiting, attach the battery again. We take out the battery to make sure that all the capacitors are discharged correctly and all the current data stored in RAM is lost. Check your game and whether the problem is solved once you turn off your computer.
If you use a PC instead of the computer, shut it down, disconnect all the modules and take out the main power cable source. Plug back all the things turn it on again.
Solution 2: Updating Your Mods and Installing the Latest Patches
You may be using several mods to change the gameplay or add some extra features. Disable all these mods and launch the game again. Mods always change the core files of the game and can twist its behavior. So, changing the mods or disabling them is the best option right here to remove the error completely.
In case you don’t use any mods, you should give a visit to the official website and check for any new patch. The developers always release some patches to fix the previous bugs and problems if any. Download the new patch to resolve your problem.
Solution 3: Launching in Windowed Mode
If still, the error keeps popping, then another solution is right here which works for most of the people. Try launching the game in Windowed mode because there is a probability that the resolution you are trying to launch in is not supported or the game is not able to resize itself according to it. To launch the game in windowed mode, follow the steps given below.
Step 1: Open the Skyrim launcher and select “options” displayed on the main screen.
Step 2: When the dialogue box appears, check the “windowed mode” which you will find at the left bottom side of the screen.
You can also try changing the resolution and check for the change.
Step 3: Now click on ‘apply’ and the changes will be applied in the whole game. Launch the game again and examine whether the error is solved or not.
Solution 4: Deleting Game Files
Before trying the solution of reinstalling the device drivers, let’s delete some game preferences and then try launching the game again. This is also a solution because when the game could not find present preferences, it will automatically generate new ones to launch the game.
Follow the steps listed below
Step 1: First turn off your game completely. Now go to the directory where you have installed the stream and remove the folder “appcache”. Don’t worry, it will automatically be created the next time you launch the game.
Step 2: Visit the directory of Skyrim. “C:\users\” user name”\documents\mygame” is the default location
Step 3: Delete the files with the name:
1. Skyrim.ini
2. SkyrimPrefs.ini
Step 4: Now turn off your computer completely. After waiting patiently for a couple of minutes, turn it back on and check to launch the game again.
Solution 5: Updating Graphics Drivers
If you still face the problem then most probably the problem is with the current driver installed in your computers. Having corrupt or outdated drivers can be the reason why Skyrim fails to initialize the modules.
Now there are 2 ways available to us through which we can update the drivers: manually and automatically. If you want to do it manually, you have to personally download the driver after going through and searching it from the manufacturer’s website.
Before you upload the new drivers, don’t forget to check to install the default one. To do so follow:
Step 1: Go to the “safe mode”. Type and enter “devmgmt.msc” in the dialogue box. Go to the “display adapter”, right-click on your adapter and uninstall it.
Step 2: Boot your computer into normal mode, press Windows + r, type msc in the dialogue box that appears on your screen, and enter. The default drivers will install. If not, right-click on any negative space and click on “scan for hardware changes”. Now check whether the Skyrim works or not. If it does, then congratulations are in order but if it does not, then you need to carry on further.
Step 3: Now after the 2nd step failed, you got two choices- either search online for the latest drivers available for your hardware from the manufacturer’s website like NVIDIA, etc (and install it yourselves) or let the windows install the latest version itself (by searching for updates automatically)
Step 4: In step 4 you will learn how to install it manually. Right-click on your hardware and chose “update driver”. Click on the first option “Search automatically for updated driver software”. After that, click on “browse for driver”. Then navigate to the location where you downloaded it.
Step 5: Last step includes restarting your computer after installing the drivers, launching Skyrim, and checking if the error appears again or not.
Solution 6: Update Skyrim
Skyrim is one of the best games from Bethesda but is also full of bugs and problems. So, we recommend you to always check for the latest updates on the website from where you bought the game as developers generally launch new patches to repair and treat the bugs and problems.
Your Skyrim Failed to Initialize Renderer error will solve if it is in the game and not on your computer.
If you use Stream to launch the game, you only need to connect to the internet the next time you open the client, and Stream will let you know if there are any updates uploaded by the developers.
Solution 7: Disable Mods
We know Mods are a bit useful and add extra fun, features, mechanics, and characteristics into the game to make our playing filled with enjoyment. However, the community created those Mods and are not always compatible with our game.
So, the next solution we bring to you to solve the error “Failed to Initialize Renderer” is disabling your mods and checking whether the mods were a problem or not.
Follow the steps carefully and disabling the mods will be an easy task for you
Step 1: Open your desktop and double click on the Skyrim launcher
Step 2: Search and select the option “data files”
Step 3: Then the following window will show you all your expansions and mods. You have unchecked them all and if you wish, you can troubleshoot further.
Step 4: Select the “OK” option and start again
Step 5: Now play your game and check for the Skyrim Failed to Initialize Renderer error. If it does not appear that means your problem is solved. You can later enable the mods one by one.
Conclusion
We know guys you want to play your game trouble and hassle-free. Although Skyrim is a good performing game there are times we encounter the errors and the above mentioned is one of them.
The above solutions are the best ones you will find. It will solve your problem and error of “Failed to Initialize Renderer”.
