Unreal Engine Exiting Due to D3D Device Being Lost: Fix

“Unreal Engine is exiting due to D3D device being lost” means the game lost its connection to your graphics card, and the error code after it tells you why: 0x887A0006 'HUNG' is a GPU timeout, 0x887A0005 'REMOVED' is a full loss of the card. It is a PC-side problem — driver, overclock, power or heat — not a game bug, which is why the same crash appears across dozens of Unreal Engine games. Read your code first, then work the fixes below in order.

The full message usually looks like this:

LowLevelFatalError [File:Unknown] [Line: 200]
Unreal Engine is exiting due to D3D device being lost. (Error: 0x887A0006 - 'HUNG')

The line number varies by engine version. The part that matters is the code in brackets.

Step 1 — Read the error code

Unreal Engine doesn’t generate this failure itself. It reports the error Windows’ DirectX layer (DXGI) handed back, so the code maps directly to a DXGI error:

Code in the message	DXGI error	What happened	Go to
0x887A0006 - 'HUNG'	DEVICE_HUNG	GPU took too long; Windows’ TDR reset the driver (~2 s)	DXGI_ERROR_DEVICE_HUNG fix
0x887A0005 - 'REMOVED'	DEVICE_REMOVED	Windows treated the GPU as unplugged	DXGI_ERROR_DEVICE_REMOVED fix
0x887A0007 - 'RESET'	DEVICE_RESET	Device reset, often by bad commands or a driver fault	Fixes 1–3 below
0x887A0020	DRIVER_INTERNAL_ERROR	The driver itself failed	Fix 1 (clean driver)
0x0 - 'S_OK'	none — a known UE 4.26/4.27 case	Overlay/MPO conflict, iGPU + NVIDIA	Fix 5

HUNG is by far the most common. If you see it, the dedicated DEVICE_HUNG guide goes deeper on the TDR timeout; this page covers what is specific to Unreal Engine games.

Fix 1 — Clean-install your GPU driver

A corrupted or half-updated driver is the most common cause and the cheapest to rule out.

1. Download the current driver for your GPU from NVIDIA, AMD or Intel.
2. Boot into Safe Mode and run Display Driver Uninstaller (DDU) to remove the old driver completely.
3. Install the fresh driver and reboot.
4. Clear the shader cache so the game rebuilds shaders against the new driver.

If the crash started right after a driver update, install the previous driver version instead — a regression in one release is a real possibility.

Fix 2 — Remove every overclock

Unreal Engine 5 games push GPUs hard, and an overclock that is “stable” in other games often isn’t here.

• GPU core and memory: reset to stock in MSI Afterburner or your vendor tool. Factory-overclocked cards can also be unstable — try a small negative core offset (−50 to −100 MHz) as a test.
• RAM: if your code is REMOVED, briefly disable XMP/EXPO to run at JEDEC speed. Unstable memory can cause the GPU to drop off the bus. See how to enable XMP or EXPO to re-enable it afterwards.
• CPU: undo any undervolt or PBO/curve tweaks during testing.

If the crash stops at stock clocks, add your overclock back gradually to find the unstable setting.

Fix 3 — Rule out power and heat

The GPU losing contact mid-game is often a hardware-level brownout or thermal event:

• Use separate PCIe power cables for each 8-pin connector instead of one daisy-chained cable, and reseat any 12VHPWR/12V-2x6 connector fully.
• Check your PSU has headroom for your GPU’s peak draw — transient spikes are much higher than the rated TDP.
• Watch GPU hotspot and memory temperatures in an overlay. Sustained temperatures near the card’s limit can trigger the crash. Clean dust, improve airflow, or cap your frame rate to lower the load.

Fix 4 — Switch DirectX version and cut overlays

These are Unreal-specific workarounds that help when a driver bug affects only one API or when an overlay is involved:

• Try the other API. Many Unreal Engine games accept a launch option — in Steam, right-click the game → Properties → Launch Options — of -dx11 or -dx12. If your crash is DX12-only, DX11 can avoid it (at some performance cost).
• Disable overlays: Steam, Discord, GeForce/NVIDIA App, and any recording or RGB software overlays. Each one hooks into Direct3D.
• Use borderless windowed instead of exclusive fullscreen if the crash happens on alt-tab or when a popup appears.
• Cap your frame rate with the in-game limiter or RTSS. Uncapped menus running at hundreds of FPS are a common place for this crash to appear.

Fix 5 — The 0x0 ‘S_OK’ variant (MPO)

If your message ends in (Error: 0x0 - 'S_OK'), you are probably seeing a specific, documented case. It was reported in Unreal Engine 4.26 and 4.27 on PCs with both integrated graphics and an NVIDIA card, triggered when an overlay window appeared in fullscreen.

NVIDIA traced this family of problems to multiplane overlay (MPO) behaviour with Game Ready drivers 461.09 and newer, and published a support article with an official file to disable MPO. The simple workaround is to run the game in borderless windowed mode. If you disable MPO, use NVIDIA’s own method rather than a third-party tweak, and note that it is reversible — Windows has changed how the override works in recent Windows 11 builds, so re-check it after a major Windows update.

Fix 6 — Increase the TDR timeout (HUNG only, last resort)

If your code is HUNG, you can lengthen how long Windows waits before resetting the driver by setting the TdrDelay registry value (for example to 8 seconds). This hides the symptom rather than fixing the cause and helps REMOVED far less. Full steps and caveats are in the DEVICE_HUNG guide.

Still crashing?

• Verify the game files in Steam or the Epic Games Launcher — a corrupted shader or pak file can crash the renderer.
• Check VRAM: if the crash comes after a long session at high settings, you may be running out of video memory first — see out of video memory error fix and why FPS drops after hours of gameplay.
• Test another Unreal game. If several UE titles crash the same way, the problem is your PC. If only one does, check that game’s known issues and patches.

The short version

• The message is a wrapper — the code in brackets is the diagnosis.
• HUNG = GPU timeout → clean driver, remove overclocks. REMOVED = card lost → overclocks (including XMP/EXPO), power, heat.
• Try -dx11/-dx12, disable overlays, and use borderless windowed.
• S_OK on UE 4.26/4.27 with an iGPU + NVIDIA → MPO; borderless windowed or NVIDIA’s MPO fix.

Once the crash is fixed, the rest of your Windows setup still matters for smooth frame times — see the best tools to fix stuttering and our timer resolution guide.