Windows user ejects graphics card, immediately regrets it — curiosity killed the VM acceleration

If you see an option in the Windows system tray (notification area) that offers you the option to eject your GPU, it is advisable to resist the temptation if you don’t know what you’re doing. Redditor YnosNava found out first hand what kind of trouble ejecting a GPU can get you into when they clicked eject — presumably out of curiosity. “Took me an hour to fix because the GPU was not recognized anymore,” lamented the GPU ouster.

Virtual insanity

If you’ve never seen the option to eject your PC’s GPU, you aren’t alone. This feature of Windows is only seen in a few very specific situations. In YnosNava’s case, they were running “a Virtual Machine with PCIe passthrough under Proxmox.”

PCIe passthrough is a technique to benefit from improved video acceleration in a virtual machine. It basically speeds up GPU-sensitive operations in the virtual machine by providing direct access to the graphics card hardware. YnosNava appears to have been “playing around” with this feature in a Proxmox open-source server install, on the quest for improved performance.

One of the peculiarities of PCIe passthrough in a VM — in this case, at least — is that the GPU you have decided to directly access is listed among attached devices that are available to be ejected with the click of the mouse.

Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should