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Wondered if it is possible to use DevCon to restart a display device as a stop-gap solution to artifacts left over from a graphics card malfunction?

In particular it leaves my cursor very un-user-friendly:

cursor

I found out the hardware ID of my display adapter through device manager (below)

[(windows key + pause break) -> device manager -> display adapters -> right click your display adapter -> properties -> details -> hardware ids.]

I tried the commands (opened with admin privileges) devcon restart "PCI\VEN_1002" and devcon restart =display but it always come back with No devices restarted..

Is it even possible to restart the graphics card without a system reboot?

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3 Answers 3

Reset to default
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To use Devcon I had to use very full IDs, which was too much typing and checking to insure it was correct.
I do not think that the ID you used would find it.

What I do is find a significant differance items in the whole ID
In a CMDprompt I begin like this:

Devcon.exe find *

Big long WildCard list that shows how the system defines them.

For the Video cards specific start with
Devcon.exe find *PCI*

Then I find some significant numbers for that device in the list, and use simple wild cards again 

Devcon.exe find *07d1*

Then I have it down to 1or2 item, and I again See it, I add a few more significant ID items, and keep the wild cards

Devcon.exe Status *07d1*PID_3300*

I also use Status to tell its "running" or not for error control, or for checking my work.
I use Disable and Enable, as opposed to restart, but then again I am usually turning on and off.

So there is a Lazy way of finding things for sure, and testing for sure that your ID aim is close enough.

See also How to restart a video card driver in Windows 7?

For curser problems long ago, it was easily possible to take the curser out of hardware, by reducing hardware acceleration 1 notch (before it was in a different place). You could try it, and see if your curser problems go away, and other video performance is not effected. http://www.thewindowsclub.com/hardware-acceleration-windows-7

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  • For some reason it still just says "No devices restarted" or "No devices disabled", etc. I used your brilliant example to make sure I got the correct ID of the graphics card and command prompt is open with administrator privileges. Any ideas?
    – Jonathan
    Aug 28, 2013 at 18:40
  • @defaye Just tested the "restart" on my ATI/AMD card and it worked. A video that was open did not like that much, but it blanked out the monitor and made the connect sounds, and came back. Did you "status" the same thing, and have it read back running correctaly? It is not a very good option, because it has shrunk all my windows to "VGA" sizes,and shifted them off the 2nd, makeing a mess.
    – Psycogeek
    Aug 30, 2013 at 14:04
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    Easier to start with: devcon find * pci*
    – Derek Ziemba
    Jun 13, 2015 at 0:58
  • Excellent Idea, i will add that in.
    – Psycogeek
    Jun 13, 2015 at 1:17
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I'm not sure if you have solved this yet, but I also wanted to do a similar thing and found it much easier.

Using DevCon just type:

devcon hwids =display

This will display the IDs for your video card, You can use any of these to execute the next command (I myself used the shortest one). 

devcon restart id

Note: Make sure you right-click command prompt and run as administrator or it won't restart.

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  • Be prepared that Your computer may hang entirely.
    – Roland Pihlakas
    Jun 27, 2016 at 8:26
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Try restarting the Desktop Window Manager Session Manager service as a stopgap. I do that when menu items leave artifacts on my screen that won't go away.

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  • Nice suggestion, but this did not work for me.
    – Jonathan
    Aug 6, 2013 at 22:04
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    Or use a similar route: kill the explorer.exe process and then re-run it.
    – djangofan
    Aug 7, 2013 at 0:04

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