Interesting shortcut on Windows: Windows+Ctrl+Shift+B

The advantage of working inside the Windows engineering group is you stumble upon some cool or weird new and old features you never knew about.

One of this nuggets is the keyboard shortcut Windows+Ctrl+Shift+B. So what does it do? It resets the graphics subsystem on your machine (and makes your machine say Beep!).

Apparently this was introduced in the Vista timeframe where we introduced the new Desktop Windows Manager (DWM) in Vista.

Also makes you wonder what other shortcuts are hidden in Windows

Comments

Comment by James Tighe on 2016-11-08 14:45:33 -0800

I push Windows (key)+Ctrl+Shift+B and the screen went black then came back. Therefore nothing happened.

Comment by Matthijs Hoekstra on 2016-11-09 14:14:33 -0800

The blanking was the system reset.

Comment by Barb K on 2019-05-16 09:06:30 -0800

I do not know if this is even active but this combination (found elsewhere) saved me from last resort of reimage on my Windows 10 when my monitor won’t come back on. Scenario-Windows is not sleeping but monitor goes off as it’s told to every 10 minutes. Sometimes, monitor light comes on but display does not. I know computer is on because when I touch power, it shows up shutting down screen.Tried a dozen things, drivers, bios, different setting here and there. Found this combo and voila! No more forced reboots.

Comment by Dondjiwo Wise on 2019-11-04 01:41:00 -0800

I had a problem my screen blank and I tried to use this to reset display but it still blank