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Is there a way to restart the Desktop Window Manager in Windows 8? Note that this is not Explorer, but DWM itself (restarting Explorer didn't do anything for me). Currently mine is using 4,352MB RAM and hovering in the 2% CPU range. I've tried doing net stop uxsms but apparently that service name doesn't exist for Windows 8. Whenever DWM gets like this, my system starts acting weird even though Task Manager says I have 11.2GB RAM free (20.6 in use).

Restarting my system usually takes care of the issue, but I hate having to do that every few weeks just because of this.

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  • "On Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012, DWM is used at all times and cannot be disabled." - source, "In Windows 8, Desktop Window Manager (DWM) is always ON and cannot be disabled by end users and apps." - source
    – Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007
    Commented Oct 8, 2013 at 20:56
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    You should worry about the underlying problem, not restarting the DWM. :) Primarily, have you ensured all your drivers are up-to-date using Windows 8 drivers from the manufacturer(s)?
    – Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007
    Commented Oct 8, 2013 at 20:57
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    This has already been answered: superuser.com/questions/212407/…
    – Josh
    Commented Oct 8, 2013 at 21:02
  • @Josh - nice find. I do in fact have three monitors (all running 2560x1600) with dual video cards in a non-SLI manner (not a gamer so didn't see why I would do this). I just disabled Chrome's hardware acceleration so I'm interested in seeing if that helps any. I also confirmed all drivers are up to date as per Windows Update which is the only source I use for drivers these days. Thanks everyone for the assistance!
    – Scott Salyer
    Commented Oct 9, 2013 at 1:16

3 Answers 3

Reset to default
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Here is a nice way to do it: open the command prompt with administrative rights.

windows key -> type 'cmd' -> right click 'command prompt' and choose 'run as administrator'

then type

taskkill /f /im dwm.exe
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Use Taskmanager or ProcessExplorer and simply kill/terminate the DWM process. Winlogon.exe automatically restarts the DWM.exe process.

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I'm not sure how to give Josh the credit for this (from the comments above), but the answer ultimately came from: Why does Desktop Window Manager leak memory or even crash?. By disabling hardware acceleration on Chrome and restarting it, then letting things sit overnight DWM went from 4.4GB to ~446MB which is a dramatic difference. It looks like other things are still acting weird/slow (even after using magicandre1981's answer - specifically doing a search in the Start area takes 5+ seconds to accept characters) which doesn't feel right on a system with a Quad i7, 32GB DDR3 and 4GB video RAM, but maybe I'll still just have to stick with the occasional restart still. Whenever I do a reboot everything is blazing fast again.

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  • how long does it take that DWMs mem usage grows so much? Minutes or hours?
    – magicandre1981
    Commented Oct 9, 2013 at 17:56
  • Days or weeks. I don't like to reboot :-)
    – Scott Salyer
    Commented Oct 11, 2013 at 17:37
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    this is too long to trace it correctly.
    – magicandre1981
    Commented Oct 12, 2013 at 5:32

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