game blocked from graphics hardware

Okay, here is the article sharing my experience with the “game blocked from graphics hardware” issue:

So, I was trying to fire up this game the other day, I think it’s called “League of Legends”. The icon looks cool, with a big golden “L”, and I’ve heard it’s a blast. It’s supposed to be some kind of online battle arena thing, where you team up with other people and duke it out against another team. Sounds like a good time, right?

I got it all downloaded and installed. Double-clicked the icon, ready to jump in, and BAM! Hit with this error message that just says “application has been blocked from accessing graphics hardware“. I’m like, “What the heck does that even mean?” I just wanted to play my game!

First thing I did? Restart the computer, of course. I mean, that fixes like 90% of problems, right? Turned it off, turned it back on, same error. No dice.

Then, I thought, maybe it’s the game itself, maybe I got a bad download or something. So, I uninstalled the whole thing, went back to their website, and downloaded it again. It took a while, but I finally got it installed again. Clicked the icon, held my breath, and… nope. Same error. Ugh!

Next, I figured, maybe my graphics drivers were acting up. They’re basically the software that lets your computer talk to your graphics card. So I went to the website for the company that makes my graphics card and looked for the latest drivers. Downloaded them, installed them, restarted the computer (again!), and tried to launch the game. Still nothing. At this point, I’m starting to get a little frustrated, to put it mildly.

Then, I went down the rabbit hole of online forums. I found a bunch of other people who had the same problem, and they were all trying different things. One person said to change some settings in the graphics control panel, so I tried that. Didn’t work. Another person said to run the game as an administrator, so I tried that, too. Still nothing. It was like a wild goose chase.

I even tried messing with the Windows Registry, which is like the deep, dark underbelly of your computer’s operating system. It’s where all the really technical settings are stored. I found some instructions online that said to change a certain value in the registry. I was a little nervous about it because I’d heard that messing with the registry could really screw up your computer if you didn’t know what you were doing. But I was getting desperate, so I followed the instructions carefully, fingers crossed the whole time. Restarted the computer (yes, again), tried to launch the game, and… wait for it… still nothing. I was about ready to throw my computer out the window!

Finally, after hours of this, I stumbled upon a thread where someone mentioned something about “TdrDelay”. Apparently, it’s a setting in Windows that controls how long the system waits for the graphics card to respond before it resets it. The person in the thread said that increasing this value could sometimes fix the “application has been blocked” error.

So, I found some more detailed instructions online on how to change the TdrDelay setting. It involved going back into the registry, but this time I knew a little bit more about what I was doing. I followed the steps, increased the TdrDelay value, restarted the computer (for the millionth time), and launched the game. And guess what? It worked! The game finally started up, no error message. I couldn’t believe it. I was so happy I almost did a backflip. Almost.

The solution is so easy!

• I opened the Registry Editor. I just typed “regedit” in the Windows search bar and hit Enter.
• Then I navigated to this location: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESystemCurrentControlSetControlGraphicsDrivers. It’s like a folder structure, just keep clicking on the little arrows to expand the folders until you get to the right place.
• I created a new DWORD (32-bit) Value and named it TdrDelay. To do that, I right-clicked in the right-hand pane, selected “New”, and then “DWORD (32-bit) Value”.
• I double-clicked on the new TdrDelay value and changed its value data from 0 to 8.
• Then, closed the Registry Editor and restarted my computer.

So, yeah, that’s my story of how I finally got that game to work. It was a major pain, but I learned a lot about how computers and graphics cards work. And now I can finally play my game! If any of you run into the same problem, hopefully, this will help you fix it without having to go through all the other stuff I tried. Good luck, and happy gaming!