Crash at start, redid all steps twice.

[Exitiumlion]

Crash at start, redid all steps twice.
this is what comes up just before CMD window closes

Using "nvidia-smi" i saw im using Cuda 12.8... but 12.2 won't install. not sure if that is a problem.

[fagenorn]

Hey, using cuda 12.8 is fine - that shouldn't be a problem. The most likely issue is that cuDNN isn't installed. For that, please refer to this part of the readme (just the cuDNN part). https://github.com/fagenorn/handcrafted-persona-engine?tab=readme-ov-file#prereq-cuda

You'll have to manually download version CuDNN 9.8.0 of the Tarball. here is a direct link
https://developer.download.nvidia.com/compute/cudnn/redist/cudnn/windows-x86_64/cudnn-windows-x86_64-9.8.0.87_cuda12-archive.zip

Then follow the steps in the readme to copy the contents to the correct folder where CUDA is installed.

[Exitiumlion]

I'm at a loss here, I've done and followed every step twice.
Even wiped out NVidia and started again fresh.
No change.

CuDNN was done manually too

[fagenorn]

This could be related to your environment variables not setuo correctly. You should have CUDA_PATH setup pointing towards your CUDA folder. Something like C:\Program Files\NVIDIA GPU Computing Toolkit\CUDA\v12.8

Normally this is done automatically when installing CUDA, but better to make sure.

[Exitiumlion]

I believe i've done that right,

maybe it's something else?