Fix: Your video card does not support alpha blending

Alpha blending is used for displaying an alpha bitmap (this is a bitmap which has semi-transparent or transparent pixels). In addition to RBG colors, each pixel in an alpha bitmap also has a transparency component known as the alpha channel.

Users might encounter the error “Your video card does not support alpha blending” whenever they try to launch and play a game. The reason why this error occurs is mainly that of the display drivers outdated or not correctly installed. Follow the steps listed below; start with the first one and work your way down. You should also perform simple troubleshooting tasks yourself such as restarting etc.

Solution 1: Updating/rolling back Graphics drivers

Graphics card manufacturers roll our frequent updates to include more features and reduce bugs all the time. You should explore the internet, google your hardware and see if there are any available drivers for you to install. Either this or you can let Windows automatically update them for you. Nevertheless, a little research might make the troubleshooting easier for you.

Furthermore, if updating the drivers don’t work for you, you should consider rolling back the drivers to a previous build. It is not a surprise to know that newer drivers are sometimes not stable or conflict with the operating system.

Tip: Before proceeding with this solution, try disabling device and then enabling it again. This simple thing solved the problem for many people.

1. Install the utility Display Driver Uninstaller. You can continue without this step but this ensures that there are no remnants of the drivers.
2. After installing Display Driver Uninstaller (DDU), launch your computer into safe mode. You can learn how to boot your computer into safe mode by reading our article on it.
3. After booting your computer into safe mode, launch the application which was just installed.
4. After launching the application, select the first option “Clean and restart”. The application will then automatically uninstall the installed drivers and restart your computer accordingly.

5. Boot your computer into normal mode, press Windows + R, type “devmgmt.msc” in the dialogue box and press Enter. Most probably the default drivers will be installed. If not, right-click on any empty space and select “Scan for hardware changes”.
6. Now there are two options. Either you can search online for the latest driver available for your hardware from the manufacturer’s website such as NVIDIA etc. (and install manually) or you can let Windows install the latest version itself (search for updates automatically).
7. We will take a look at installing manually. Right-click on your hardware and select “Update driver”. Select the first option “Search automatically for updated driver software”. Choose the second option if you are updating manually and select “Browse for driver” and navigate to the location where you downloaded.

8. Restart your computer after installing the drivers, launch the game and check if this solves the problem.

Tip: You should also make sure that you Intel drives have the latest drivers installed.

Solution 2: Enabling GPU Scaling for AMD graphics hardware

GPU scaling is a feature of modern graphics processing units which is designed to ensure that the image output of any game/application fits the screen. GPU scaling is a very useful feature in situations where the GPU is outputting a different resolution as compared to the monitor’s native resolution. Regardless of your manufacturer, try enabling GPU scaling and see if it does the trick.

After extensive troubleshooting, it seems that computers running AMD graphics hardware had the problem of scaling the resolution which caused the alpha blending error. After enabling the feature, the error message went away and the game was able to launch as expected.

1. Right-click on any empty space on your desktop and click “AMD Radeon Settings”.

2. In AMD Radeon settings, click on the ‘Display’ present at the near top of the screen.

3. Turn the GPU Scaling option to “On” instead of “Off”.

4. After applying the necessary changes, restart your computer and try launching the game again. Make sure that you are running the game in administrator mode.

Solution 3: Selecting Default Graphics card

Many users experiencing this error had one thing in common: they were using dedicated graphics card but they also had integrated graphics in their systems. There is a known issue in Windows where the computer keeps switching between the dedicated graphics and integrated ones. We will specify which graphics hardware to use the control panel to stop this from happening.

1. Right-click on any empty space on your screen and select “Nvidia control panel.”

2. Click “Manage 3D settings” and select “High-performance NVIDIA processor”.

3. Press Apply to save changes and exit. Now check if the problem got solved.

Solution 4: Reinstalling the Visual C++ Redistributable Packages

It is possible that there are some important system files missing from your computer. Without these files, your game might be having problems with alpha blending and hence, cause the error. In order to replace the missing files, we can download the whole redistributable package and install it. Do note that you should always avoid downloading .dll files from the internet from non-official websites. They may be infected with malware and virus and can infect your computer easily.

Note: You should make sure that also all the latest Windows Updates are installed on your computer. Sometimes it is the case that a particular bug or error is fixed in different patches. Make sure that everything is updated beforehand before moving on to more technical solutions listed below. Also, install all the packages you can find. Not just these which are mentioned below.

1. Head over to the official Microsoft downloading
2. Click the Download button after selecting the language.

3. Select “vc_redistx64.exe” and press Next. Soon after the download will commence. Save the file in an accessible location and run the exe file.

4. After the installation is complete, restart your computer and check if the problem is solved.

Note: If you are using 64 bit Windows, you can install both (vredist_x64.exe and vredist_x86.exe). However, if you have 32 bit, you should only install “vredist_x86.exe”. You can check which version of Windows you have by press Windows + S, type “system information” and open the application which comes forth.

Also, try installing all DirectX End-User Runtimes. Make sure that you all components updated before you try launching the game again.