Speaking of Windows 11, which is full of curry flavor, it is not surprising that there are some bugs in every update. Start menu exceptions, authentication exceptions, slowdowns, etc. are all small cases. Some time ago, some models of solid-state drives were even damaged and data was lost.
After updating in the middle of this month (it should be the 2H25 version), some netizens actually unlocked the ability to eject independent graphics cards. Combined with the technology of ejecting battery packs in a new energy vehicle at the front end, it is like Wolong meets Fengxia.
In people's minds, hardware ejections from the Windows system taskbar are limited to removable storage devices such as USB flash drives and mobile hard drives. However, in fact, ejecting graphics cards is nothing new. There was a collective outbreak in July this year (possibly KB5062660). This long-standing system bug can be traced back to a few years ago.
This situation usually occurs for three reasons: First, the device management mechanism of Windows mistakenly associates the graphics card of the PCIe interface with the hot-swappable function. This may be a compatibility issue between Windows and NVIDIA/AMD graphics card drivers; second, when the PCIe pass-through function is enabled in some virtualization platforms, the graphics card will be recognized as "removable hardware" and trigger a pop-up option. In addition, if the external graphics card system uses the USB4 interface, it may also prompt for safe removal.
Some people may ask, what happens if the graphics card is successfully ejected? This effect varies depending on the device, but it usually does not damage the hardware. If it is a desktop computer, the monitor will immediately go black or blurred. Some will return to normal display later, and some will need to be restarted to recover. If it is a laptop system, the display will be switched to core display. Although the screen will display normally, the game performance will plummet. If you want to restore the independent graphics card, just click "Scan for hardware changes" in the device manager, or restarting can also solve the problem.
However, some notebook users have reported that this is a "benign" bug. Someone posted on Zhihu that his Lenovo Y9000X gaming notebook still wakes up frequently when the independent graphics card is in core display mode. The power consumption of the whole machine starts at 30W, and a 100Wh battery cannot support it. After 3-4 hours; after the independent graphics card is ejected, the system that the core graphics takes over enters a super low energy consumption mode. The average power consumption is only about 8W, browsing the web or editing documents is only about 15W, and the battery life reaches an astonishing 8 hours.
If your Windows system has a bug that pops up the graphics card, you can try to restart or update the graphics card driver, set the BIOS according to the official documentation, or ignore it and wait for the next update of Windows. Of course, some people have solved the problem through indirect methods. For example, there are ASUS laptop users in the post bar. After reinstalling the touchpad driver, everything is normal.
In addition, there are some other solutions circulating on the Internet, such as modifying the "registry" in the computer to disable the pop-up option. This approach is obviously a headache, and it is difficult and risky for ordinary users to operate. If it creates new problems, the gain will outweigh the loss.