stride3d/stride · error · InvalidOperationException

No compatible screen modes found after ranking

Error message

No compatible screen modes found after ranking

What it means

After enumerating candidate devices, FindBestDevice calls RankDevices to order them and throws if zero devices survive ranking. This means device candidates existed but none passed the ranking/compatibility filter, so no GraphicsDeviceInformation can be returned to CreateDevice.

Solutions

1. Check that the GPU adapter is enabled and functioning (Device Manager / dxdiag).
2. Remove or fix custom device ranking/filtering overrides that might discard all candidates.
3. Re-enable full device enumeration by resetting GraphicsDeviceManager settings to defaults and retrying.

Example fix

// before
gdm.DeviceCreationFlags |= DeviceCreationFlags.Debug; // custom filters reject all
gdm.Ranking = myRankingThatFiltersEverything;
// after
gdm.Ranking = null; // use default ranking
// or verify adapter before creating device

// ensure a functional adapter exists before running
if (!GraphicsDevice.IsSupported) throw new PlatformNotSupportedException("No usable GPU adapter");

try { game.Run(); }
catch (InvalidOperationException ex) when (ex.Message.Contains("after ranking"))
{
    logger.LogError(ex, "All graphics device candidates were rejected");
    throw;
}

When it happens

Trigger: FindBestDevice collects devices (which pass the earlier profile check), then RankDevices filters/orders them and the resulting list is empty — e.g. all candidates rejected due to adapter/outputs constraints or conflicting device description filters.

Common situations: Systems with only software/null adapters, GPU adapter disabled in Device Manager, custom Ranking/DeviceFilter hooks that reject every candidate, or broken multi-GPU configurations.

Understand the failure class

Background: EmptyResultError / "no results found": when an API or scraper succeeds but returns zero rows — this error's family across 9 libraries.

Related errors

• None of the graphics profiles
• The length of the destination data buffer is larger than…
• A overlaps with another element. Check the element's offset
• A region can only be specified for Textures with…
• adapter

AI-assisted analysis of stride3d/stride@96fad776d2 (2026-09-14). Data as JSON: /api/errors/2566eaf6ab10bc04. Report an issue: GitHub.

Appendix: source

Thrown at sources/engine/Stride.Games/GraphicsDeviceManager.cs:696

                // Nothing was found; first, let's check if graphics profile was actually supported
                // NOTE: We don't do this preemptively because in some cases it seems to take lot of time
                //       (happened on a test machine, several seconds freeze on ID3D11Device.Release())
                if (!IsPreferredProfileAvailable(preferredParameters.PreferredGraphicsProfile, out var availableGraphicsProfile))
                {
                    var notSupportedProfiles = string.Join(", ", preferredParameters.PreferredGraphicsProfile);
                    throw new InvalidOperationException($"None of the graphics profiles [{notSupportedProfiles}] are supported by the Graphics Device. " +
                        $"The highest available profile is [{availableGraphicsProfile}].");
                }

                // Otherwise, there was just no screen mode
                throw new InvalidOperationException("No compatible screen mode found");
            }

            RankDevices(devices);

            if (devices.Count == 0)
            {
                throw new InvalidOperationException("No compatible screen modes found after ranking");
            }
            return devices[0];
        }

        /// <summary>
        ///   Ranks a list of <see cref="GraphicsDeviceInformation"/>s before creating a new Graphics Device.
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="foundDevices">A list of possible device configurations to be ranked and reordered.</param>
        protected virtual void RankDevices(List<GraphicsDeviceInformation> foundDevices)
        {
            // Don't sort if there is a single device (mostly for XAML/UWP)
            if (foundDevices.Count == 1)
                return;

            foundDevices.Sort(CompareDeviceInformations);

            //
            // Compares two `GraphicsDeviceInformation` instances to determine their ranking.

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