Application has been blocked from accessing graphics hardware

Hi, I'm on Windows 10 HP Pavilion 15, NVIDIA 840M graphics card. I've been getting this error for over a month whenever I try to run a game: 'Application has been blocked from accessing graphics hardware'. It's preventing any games from running on my laptop. I've looked all over the internet for a solution but nothing worked. I've even updated the drivers and installed windows updates but the problem persists. Please advise.