How to restart a video card driver in Windows 7?

Some times my video card driver (Intel GMA X4500HD) crashes and gets restarted automatically. But more often (almost every time I watch a flash-powered online video for a period of time) it just gets slower and slower and extremely slow until I restart my computer. This looks like a resource leak in the video driver code and I'd like to try restarting it alone without restarting the whole system. How do I restart it (or cause it to crash immediately to be restarted automatically by the OS) manually?

Ivan

Posted 2013-07-05T23:13:40.127

Reputation: 6 173

Maybe I dont understand something, so I'll put this as a comment, but I think u can go device manager, select the card, go to it's properties, and update driver. Select choose from installed and select the one you want. Seems easy – MegaBluejay – 2016-11-16T06:50:05.673

Answers

Use the Devcon tool from Microsoft.

Using DevCon, you can enable, disable, restart, update, remove, and query individual devices or groups of devices.

To list display devices use the following command:

devcon listclass display

To restart a device use the command:

devcon restart "class id"

Example:

devcon restart "PCI\VEN_115D&DEV_0003&SUBSYS_0181115D"

Examples of use.

stderr

Posted 2013-07-05T23:13:40.127

Reputation: 9 300

Seems to do exactly what I need. Problem solved. Thanks. – Ivan – 2013-07-07T22:13:37.450

Requires a 1.4GB download, I used devmanview instead. – Maciej Swic – 2014-05-10T11:01:58.277

1@DBX8 Isn't it up to me to rate the answer based on my own opinion? I don't think it's worth a 1GB+ download to restart a graphics driver if you can do it with a smaller utility. – Maciej Swic – 2014-05-23T07:34:14.073

Get the file: devmanview.exe from Nirsoft, move it to ..\windows\system32\ and run it.
Get your device name by opening devmanview.exe: right mouse click and select Properties on your video device.
Copy "DEVICE NAME" to clipboard for use in the script: for example: "NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260" or "AMD Radeon HD 7900 Series" Open notepad and copy paste this code:

@echo off
echo.
echo *** Restarting GPU  
timeout /t 2 /nobreak >nul
devmanview.exe /disable_enable "NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260" 
echo. 
echo *** DoNe 
timeout /t 2 /nobreak >nul
taskkill /f /IM explorer.exe
explorer.exe

Remember to change "NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260" to your Graphics card name taken from ..\windows\system32\devmanview.exe

Save the notepad file as a nameyoulike.bat . Double click to reboot your GPU and driver.

Dior

Posted 2013-07-05T23:13:40.127

Reputation: 171

Awesome, thanks! I had this in Windows 8.1 with World of Tanks and a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 880M and it's much nicer than restarting Windows. – Gonfi den Tschal – 2015-01-02T15:38:20.610

Wow, it actually works, thanks! N.B.: It also kills of Firefox on my system. – Dexter – 2015-03-29T21:10:39.153

This does work, but it wreaks havoc if you use DisplayFusion. – bgmCoder – 2018-05-04T19:23:40.163

2This is the only one that worked for me-- I couldn't figure out how to download devcon. I suggest you provide a link to devmanview.exe, and also list the step open "devmanview.exe" to get the device name. – MattPark – 2013-12-10T02:08:14.943

I went ahead and did it. Welcome to SuperUser Dior! – MattPark – 2013-12-10T02:19:32.353

ServiWin allows you to easily stop, start, restart, pause, and continue service or driver

Homer Simpsons

Posted 2013-07-05T23:13:40.127

Reputation: 342

Looks great but doesn't work. Absolutely nothing happens when I click to restart or stop. – Ivan – 2013-07-07T22:12:51.757

Try running it with administrator privileges – Homer Simpsons – 2013-07-07T22:55:52.203

Of course I did. – Ivan – 2013-07-10T20:21:13.537