"Pixel Format Not Accelerated" / "Could not init GLX" / Bad video card drivers

This is specific to your system. Something with your graphics card is causing this issue, it's not a bug. Also, is your client modded or no?

It is not. I agree it probably has to do with my system, but I've been unsuccessful in troubleshooting it myself. Is this not where I should post this kind of error?

You need to update your graphics card drivers, you should download them from your graphics card manufaturers website, if you need more help, go here http://webchat.esper.net/?channels=minecrafthelp and ask, you will recieve further help there before too long

I have often found myself with this problem on my old WinXP computer. There were several things that would sometimes make it work: disabling certain services, reducing windows appearance settings, restarting my computer. I have also found more success after installing directX manually.

The older the PC the much more likely you will get errors, there's a lot of people who still use old XP machines with such problems.. Also minecraft has nothing to do with directX it goes no where near it.

Please direct your inquiries to http://www.minecraftforum.net/forum/155-support/

This have happened to me too but it ONLY happens when I start up my computer without charging when i am starting my computer. This may be your case too. This is options you can turn off in your computer settings.

More info on this:
I run a desktop. My friend sk89q diagnosed this problem and determined that the specs of minecraft versions past 1.2.5 are too high for my hardware. I think it kind of sucks that a game I paid for, knowing it has previously run for me, would eventually increase its specs over my capabilities. But eh, what can you do?

So what things in Minecraft are used that you cannot use since 1.2.5? From what I can see there is nothing majorly changed. If you are getting Pixel Format Not Accelerated it typically means that somehow the opengl context could not be created. If it could be before and not now it must be something you have done to the machine.

This is a technical support issue; this site is for bug reports only. For technical support please use the Mojang Support Center.

So how exactly is this resolved? And why do all the minecraft crashes from 1.6.1 that refer to this page, are labeled as duplicates, when this page doesn't even solve the problem?

I've got this problem for 1.6.1 only but all my drivers are up to date and definatly high enough specs to run it, any ideas?

This site isn't ment to solve technical support issues. For technical support please use the Mojang Support Center.

I made this topic way back when because I noticed a weird issue. Not your average situation where the player doesn't know how to install mods correctly. I know how to force update Minecraft, and return to earlier versions. The fact is, Minecraft will not run on my machine past 1.2.5. Not that I mind sticking to 1.2.5 when I play on this computer.
What disappoints me is that Minecraft would require higher specs to perform in later versions of the same game. I know I'm not the only one who's been frustrated by this.

My friend sk89q has teamviewed on my computer to help me troubleshoot this issue, and he confirms all this. I trust him to know how Minecraft works better than most anybody, since he's made some pretty sweet mods and stuff.

I have looked this up on LWJGL dev forums and the answer is one of the three:

• LWJGL natives (DLLs, SOs, DYLIBs) are out of date, causing the LWJGL jar to fail creating a GL context

• You don't have a graphics card that supports at least OpenGL 2 (VERY RARE, I DOUBT IT)

• Your Graphics card drivers are either out of date (broken) or you have the default Microsoft supplied ones (not accelerated)

This will get it running 100% guaranteed:

Update your graphics card driver. (If it is an nVidia, get nVidia drivers, if it is an AMD, get the AMD ones. Just because the driver works, doesn't mean it's accelerated)
Try running Minecraft. IF THE ISSUE IS STILL THERE, proceed to the next steps:
Go to your AppData/.minecraft folder,
Back up all your saves, settings, screenshots, etc. to a different folder,
Delete the .minecraft folder,
Run the game with the newest launcher possible (off of the Mojang server),
Enjoy the game, because there is no way it is broken after this.

To Joey Sandmeyer:
sk89 of Facepunch? 😃

Thanks. It could possibly be that my graphics card doesn't support OpenGL 2. It's a very old and terrible graphics card, sautered to the motherboard. Although it's not a problem for me anymore since I've gotten a new PC, but those options will probably help others.
It's interesting to know that the Open GL method changed between Minecraft versions, but if it's an upgrade then that makes sense.

And yeah, this sk89q?
http://facepunch.com/member.php?u=256873

There is no OpenGL 2 used in Minecraft. Everything is 1.3 compatible.

@Joey Sandmeyer: I've asked you this before; what exactly did we change that makes it impossible for you to run the game?

@Dmitri Poterianski:

• LWJGL natives (DLLs, SOs, DYLIBs) are out of date, causing the LWJGL jar to fail creating a GL context
  This cannot happen because we verify and unpack the natives before every playsession. If this was the case then everyone would have problems.

For those whose complaints have been labeled as duplicates to this page, follow these steps:

1. Open Control Panel
2. Locate Device Manager

• Search "Device Manager" in the (Search Control Panel) section at the top right, if you can't find it.
  3. Click Display Adapters
  4. Right click your Graphics Card
  5. Click "Update Driver Software"
  6. Click " Search Automatically..."
  7. After It's done, Restart Your System

• This method is only if you need to update your drivers. I found it hard to manually update my drivers since I would download the wrong links.

• My graphics card is an ATI Radeon HD 3600 Series, pretty bad, so I couldn't find updated drivers.

If this does not work for you, then I have no idea what's going on.

Hope this helps.

I have a Radeon 6000 and it told me that my card was up to date. And it still won't work!

Respectfully, your comment that "there is nothing Minecraft can do about this" is unreasonable. As of my writing this, there were apparently 497 happy 1.5.x users who, once they upgraded to 1.6.1, can no longer play a game for which they paid you money.
What happened between 1.5.x and 1.6.1 to make this stop working? There must be something you can do! There are many of us who do have updated graphics drivers. If you're going to state, all of a sudden, that you will no longer be backwards compatible with hardware that your users were happy playing with yesterday then you owe all of us our money back!!

I agree with Steven. I bought this for my son's birthday and he can't use it. Maybe they can buy us all new video cards that will work with it.

Steven Cohn: So you are saying that now after you have been able to play 1.5.2 on the identical setup and only changing to 1.6.1 you are not able to play? That would mean something in some way has changed in LWJGL that influences around 500 people but no-one else.

It is very un-likely but a possibility, to test this theory lets try the following:

For everyone reading below this point, if you are having the problem described in this ticket and has experienced that upgrading to 1.6.1/1.6.2 has somehow broken minecraft please do the following:

• Download: http://s3.amazonaws.com/MinecraftDownload/launcher/Minecraft.exe and run it

• After that, go into "Options" -> "Snooper Settings" and take a screenshot of the bottom of the snooper data

• Add the screenshot in this ticket

This is a screenshot of what you asked for. I'm having basically the same problem. I could play minecraft 1.5.2 but when I got the new launcher I can't really play because my frames dropped down to 10fps from my original 30-40fps. I hope this can be fixed and it's not the fact that my computer is crapy because I'd really like to play 1.6 (I am using a laptop)

Edit: I also added another picture to show how much my fps drops from old launcher to the new one

Michael: you are not having the same problem, the people who end up here are not able to play minecraft at all.

Do you know what my problem is though? or could you point me to another post with people who have my problem?

@Michael I think your problem is MC-15072

Try to update OpenGL.

---- Minecraft Crash Report ----
// You should try our sister game, Minceraft!

Time: 7/8/13 10:15 PM
Description: Initializing game

org.lwjgl.LWJGLException: Pixel format not accelerated
	at org.lwjgl.opengl.WindowsPeerInfo.nChoosePixelFormat(Native Method)
	at org.lwjgl.opengl.WindowsPeerInfo.choosePixelFormat(WindowsPeerInfo.java:52)
	at org.lwjgl.opengl.WindowsDisplay.createWindow(WindowsDisplay.java:244)
	at org.lwjgl.opengl.Display.createWindow(Display.java:306)
	at org.lwjgl.opengl.Display.create(Display.java:848)
	at org.lwjgl.opengl.Display.create(Display.java:757)
	at org.lwjgl.opengl.Display.create(Display.java:739)
	at ats.O(SourceFile:297)
	at ats.d(SourceFile:599)
	at net.minecraft.client.main.Main.main(SourceFile:101)


A detailed walkthrough of the error, its code path and all known details is as follows:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

-- Head --
Stacktrace:
	at org.lwjgl.opengl.WindowsPeerInfo.nChoosePixelFormat(Native Method)
	at org.lwjgl.opengl.WindowsPeerInfo.choosePixelFormat(WindowsPeerInfo.java:52)
	at org.lwjgl.opengl.WindowsDisplay.createWindow(WindowsDisplay.java:244)
	at org.lwjgl.opengl.Display.createWindow(Display.java:306)
	at org.lwjgl.opengl.Display.create(Display.java:848)
	at org.lwjgl.opengl.Display.create(Display.java:757)
	at org.lwjgl.opengl.Display.create(Display.java:739)
	at ats.O(SourceFile:297)

-- Initialization --
Details:
Stacktrace:
	at ats.d(SourceFile:599)
	at net.minecraft.client.main.Main.main(SourceFile:101)

-- System Details --
Details:
	Minecraft Version: 1.6.2
	Operating System: Windows 8 (x86) version 6.2
	Java Version: 1.7.0_25, Oracle Corporation
	Java VM Version: Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (mixed mode), Oracle Corporation
	Memory: 6318152 bytes (6 MB) / 26808320 bytes (25 MB) up to 1037959168 bytes (989 MB)
	JVM Flags: 1 total; -Xmx1G
	AABB Pool Size: 0 (0 bytes; 0 MB) allocated, 0 (0 bytes; 0 MB) used
	Suspicious classes: No suspicious classes found.
	IntCache: cache: 0, tcache: 0, allocated: 0, tallocated: 0
	Launched Version: 1.6.2
	LWJGL: 2.9.0
	OpenGL: ~~ERROR~~ RuntimeException: No OpenGL context found in the current thread.
	Is Modded: Probably not. Jar signature remains and client brand is untouched.
	Type: Client (map_client.txt)
	Resource Pack: Default
	Current Language: ~~ERROR~~ NullPointerException: null
	Profiler Position: N/A (disabled)
	Vec3 Pool Size: ~~ERROR~~ NullPointerException: null
This is windows 8...How do I fix? I hate crash reports.

If my graphics card is already at latest update, and it doesnt work, does it mean I cant play?

Yes.

Reinstalling my drivers and stuff doesn't make sense because i can play arma 2 and alot of other games but not minecraft so how can it be the driver?

@Dillon: Does your driver provide non broken OpenGL ?

Here is an observation that might be helpful. I used to have this bug (up until 1.5.2), and just like many people who currently have this issue, I couldn't update my graphics drivers any further. I did however have an easy workaround, and this was to run a batch script to launch Minecraft instead of the provided launcher. Oddly enough, I currently have no problem running 1.6.2 with the new launcher, but I feel that this might still be an effective workaround. If somebody want's to give it a try, there is a forum post describing how to create a batch script here. I am curious to see if this will help.

I'm having this issue as well. Running a Vista x86 machine with an ATI Radeon 3100 (bad I know) and I've never had this issue before. My graphics card supports OpenGL 2.0 and I've tried using both AMD's and Toshiba's latest driver.

Is there anything I can do to fix this issue or is this a problem with Minecraft's coding as possibly suggested by the fact that some people experience the issue and it is resolved on its own at a later time without updating hardware?

I'd like to be able to play Minecraft again. Thanks in advance.

@Joshua Gilmer Did you try catalyst 13.1 http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/windows/legacy/Pages/legacy-radeonaiw-vista32.aspx ?

Yes sir, I've tried that version. I've installed it through the Catalyst installer and also reverted and manually installed it through Device Manager and it's a no go. I've also tried the OEM drivers, even though they are older versions than the latest from Radeon I figured why not. However I didn't have luck with that either.

@Joshua Gilmer : Try the chat irc://irc.esper.net/minecrafthelp or http://webchat.esper.net/?channels=minecrafthelp as a last resort, they have a lots of problems solved. If you go there, refer to this discussion.

Yep, 1.5 ran fine, as soon as it switched launchers it broke. Strangely, the MC launcher download you provided here ALSO gave me the error, but the old launcher I had originally DID work. I have had similar problems before with modded launchers like Technic and FTB, but the original launcher always worked. I think I'll give the batch script a try, but here's my screenshot anyways.

http://postimg.org/image/cbd1ggm87/

Apparently, Mojang did something, as there are loads of new "reports" of this "error". Any ideas/confirmations?

I think the loads of new reports are simply due to the auto-report feature in the new launcher.

The recent number of reports are because Mojang's error reporting server "Hopper" is down.

If you have an older PC (laptop) with a newer OS (Windows 8/8.1), there's probably no way to get OpenGL enabled. This is at least true for my 4-year-old Lenovo ThinkPad T400s (there are no compatible drivers at MS, Lenovo or Intel site), and I suppose I am not the only one facing this compatibility problem.

I am having the same issue as Joni where the OS (Win 8.1) is installed on an older laptop. Cannot find any compatible drivers. I'm using Toshiba Satellite L Series with ATI/AMD Mobility Radeon 4100 display drivers on Windows 8.1 Pro.

Charlene, there are currently no drivers for AMD HD 4xxx series for windows 8.1.

Charlene,

There are reference drivers that may work on the AMD site: 13.1 claims to support the HD 4xxx series and support Windows 8.1 64. However, your biggest enemy is Toshiba themselves. Frequently OEMS make subtle alterations to the hardware design to meet their needs, but then fail to make updated drivers available when AMD or NVidia update the reference driver code. I work in support and have decided to no longer deploy Toshiba because they don't take their software updating support seriously enough: I expect a computer to be fully supported as a MINIMUM for it's useful three year life, but Toshiba seem to loose interest at the twelve month mark.

Check out the support page for your laptop and see if there is a recent driver there. Hopefully 13.1 will be there, and should work for you, but remember to backup your data before tinkering with anything.

IF YOU ARE SURE YOU HAVE OPENGL, READ THIS. IT MAY BE A DIFFERENT ISSUE.

Check how much ram you have. My issue was that minecraft couldn't allocate enough ram, making it unable to start the opengl, and minecraft assumed it was because of a lack of opengl. In the new window, try adding "-Xms64M" to the JVM arguments of the profile, that should work unless you have such a slow computer that minecraft would probably be practically unplayable anyway. This can also increase performance on people who don't have this issue anyway.

@Kion
This issue is most often present when one's graphics drivers are either missing, do not support the needed version of OpenGL required by the game, or have a broken implementation of OpenGL. Please also note the last bullet-point in the instructions on this report:

• If you are running custom Java arguments to increase RAM, then remove them.

Mojang now being part of Microsoft - there IS something that they (i.e. Microsoft) can do? So IMO the README text should be updated.

@Joni, I don't understand what you are implying exactly. If you are suggesting that Microsoft can remedy this problem somehow, I would think you are mistaken. 99% of all users who experience this crash are people using Windows, and that's because a) Windows operating systems are notorious for not keeping drivers up to date, and b) newer editions of Windows don't have supported drivers for older hardware. If you are suggesting that they will switch from using OpenGL to DirectX (a bad idea IMO), that would require re-writing essentially all the rendering and graphics elements of the game, which would be a big waste of time.

... and prevents the game being played on non-Intel, non-Windows platforms ...

Can this really be marked as resolved?

Updating the graphic-drivers does in fact not solve this problem.

In fact, this problem did not happen to me before, but only after updating Java to version 1.8.60 (x64).
Downgrading Java "fixes" the problem.

Linking to https://github.com/LWJGL/lwjgl/issues/119 for more info.

@@unknown, this crash has existed for a long time, and is caused by outdated or broken graphics drivers. This is not an issue the Minecraft devs can fix in the game, and for that reason it is invalid.

@[Mod] CubeTheThird
As I said, this is also caused by an update to Java in some cases.
In my case, the graphics drivers didn't change, and Java was updated.
However, you're still right stating that this is no problem on MC's side.

SillyFilly, I can validate the Java issue. I had to go back to 1.8.51 for Minecraft to work again. Both 1.8.60 and 1.8.65 gave me the same problem / error.

how i download this an make this on minecraft?

1. Don't spam posts with crash reports
2. Use {.code} (without the .) around your reports to keep the page more clean
3. Your minecraft version is outdated
4. Use the steps provided in red at the top of the page

ther´s no chance in switchin back java version. can mojang give support for actual major releases of java? is there a change to get support in german language? zhanx

@@unknown, if you're experiencing issues as described in the note, about 1st and 2nd generation Intel drivers on Windows 10, this has nothing do to with Minecraft. It has been confirmed that, since newer versions of java have official support for windows 10, the drivers Intel provide (through Microsoft update) are failing because of the invalid windows version. If, however, you are experiencing a different issue, your java version would not likely be a factor.

Okay, thank you 🙂

but I dont know how to update my nvidia driver since im only 9 😞 what do I have to do? my parents hate minecraft so they wont help me and my uncle who bought me it is in turkey now

For technical support please use the Mojang Support Center.

Just created MC-118474 & had it auto resolve.
My drivers are up to date, straight from Nvida's website.
Why would it work on this driver (& earlier drivers) if it was a driver issue? Even rolling back to early drivers doesn't change anything

@unknown, you should ask in Community Support, linked below
Quick Links:
📓 Issue Guidelines – 💬 Community Support – 📧 Customer Support – 📖 Game Wiki

is there any way that the issue could be caused by cpu insted of video card drivers? my driver are up-to-date but i have a intel celeron as my cpu, could that be the problem, i see the minecraft spec says min: intel i3-3.2ghz, but i highly doupt that

I have an I5-2450m. I have OpenGL v.3.1 and all my drivers are up to date. and I'm still getting this error. it's a laptop. and it worked up til I installed Windows 10 with v. 1.12.2 .  is there anything I can do?

,@unknown firstly please note the point made in the report about 2nd and 3rd generation Intel graphics on Windows 10. Please also note that Intel discontinued support for these before the release of Windows 10, and as such there are no official drivers from Intel supporting this operating system. For support regarding these issues, please visit the Community Support Resources for assistance.

It did not work for me as this appeared: The game crashed whilst initializing game
The game crashed whilst initializing game
Error: java.lang.IllegalStateException: GLFW error 65542: WGL: The driver does not appear to support OpenGL

I have found a solution that worked for windows 10 and 64 bit, NOT 32 bit:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5Bx8NJ_5iI

This appears to load an older win 7 vista graphics driver but if you follow the link in the description of the video it will take you to the download page: 

https://www.youtube.com/redirect?redir_token=1Gxie8RtmRR-GTjJKFgHAxI1OaN8MTU1MDc0NTQ2M0AxNTUwNjU5MDYz&q=https%3A%2F%2Fdownloadcenter.intel.com%2Fdownload%2F18402&v=j5Bx8NJ_5iI&event=video_description

I just needed to download this and it asked me when installing to upgrade to Net.framework but I didn't need to do this because once the computer restarts after installing the driver it will ask you to upgrade this anyway and then download the correct net.framework updates.

I hope this helps people who read the advice on this page and almost gave up seeing "resolved" "resolved" when it hadn't been for me, and who were told by minecraft it was not their problem, it was minecraft, and yet mojang is owned by minecraft? Go figure!!! 

If you were redirected to this ticket, please take a look at the blue and the yellow box above. If that did not help, please contact 💬 Community Support.

Please do not leave any comments here. This is a bug tracker, and not a support forum.

as i stated in the comments of MC-128302, i am using intel hd graphics gen 1 and cannot find the edit profile area or find any other launcher than the one i got with the game at minecraft.net so can someone please tell me where to go to find either the native launcher, the edit profile area or both?

The "native launcher" is the normal one. Anything mentioning "profiles" is a bit outdated, because it's (for some reason) called "installations" now. You first go to the "Installations" tab, then click the three dots on the right of whatever "profile"/"installation"/setup/… you want to start and click "Edit" in that menu.

okay,i have the right java version and can find it,what do i select?, fabian?

I'm not sure what you even tried to do with those profile settings, I just told you where to find them. For further support, see the comment directly above your first one.

My pc can't do any of those stuff!

I did all that is in this manual. I still need help. 1.16.5 version works, while 1.17 and 1.18 are not.