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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
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  • 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 Nov 16 '16 at 06:50

4 Answers4

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  1. Get the file: devmanview.exe from Nirsoft, move it to ..\windows\system32\ and run it.
  2. Get your device name by opening devmanview.exe: right mouse click and select Properties on your video device.
  3. 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.

MattPark
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Dior
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    This 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 Dec 10 '13 at 02:08
  • I went ahead and did it. Welcome to SuperUser Dior! – MattPark Dec 10 '13 at 02:19
  • 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 Jan 02 '15 at 15:38
  • Wow, it actually works, thanks! N.B.: It also kills of Firefox on my system. – Dexter Mar 29 '15 at 21:10
  • This does work, but it wreaks havoc if you use DisplayFusion. – bgmCoder May 04 '18 at 19:23
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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"
stderr
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  • ServiWin allows you to easily stop, start, restart, pause, and continue service or driver enter image description here
Homer Simpsons
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1

You can restart it using device manager

  1. go to start menu
  2. search for device manager
  3. find display adapters
  4. choose your card right click and choose disable
  5. the screen will be restarted and the size of the screen will be very small
  6. right click and enable it
Eyad Essa
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