How to Restart PostgreSQL on Windows

Summary: in this tutorial, you will learn how to restart PostgreSQL on Windows using Service Manager, command line, and pg_ctl command.

1) Restart PostgreSQL using Services Manager (GUI)

The following steps describe how to restart PostgreSQL on Windows using Service Manager (GUI):

Step 1. Stop PostgreSQL service

• Press Win+R to open the Run dialog.
• Type services.msc and press Enter.
• In the Services window, locate the PostgreSQL service. Typically, it is something like postgresql-x64-<version>.
• Right-click on it and select Stop to stop the service.

Step 2. Start PostgreSQL service

• After stopping the service, right-click on the service name.
• Select Start to start the service.

2) Restart PostgreSQL from the command line

If you prefer working with command, you can follow these steps to restart PostgreSQL:

Step 1. Open command prompt

• Press Win+R to open the Run dialog
• Type cmd and press Ctrl+Shift+Enter (not Enter). This will allow you to run the command prompt as an Administrator.
• A User Account Control pop-up will display, you can click the Yes button to acknowledge.

Step 2. Restart PostgreSQL service

Stop the PostgreSQL service using the following command:

net stop postgresql-x64-<version>

You need to replace <version> with your PostgreSQL version number. For example:

net stop postgresql-x64-16

Output:

The postgresql-x64-16 - PostgreSQL Server 16 service is stopping.
The postgresql-x64-16 - PostgreSQL Server 16 service was stopped successfully.

After the service has stopped, type the following command and press Enter to start the PostgreSQL service:

net start postgresql-x64-<version>

For example:

net start postgresql-x64-16

Output:

The postgresql-x64-16 - PostgreSQL Server 16 service is starting.
The postgresql-x64-16 - PostgreSQL Server 16 service was started successfully.

3) Restart PostgreSQL using the pg_ctl command (CLI)

PostgreSQL offers the pg_ctl utility that allows you to initialize a PostgreSQL database instance, and start, stop, or restart the PostgreSQL database server.

The pg_ctl is typically located in the bin directory within the PostgreSQL installation directory.

The following shows you how to execute the pg_ctl command to restart PostgreSQL.

It assumes that the bin directory is included in the PATH environment variable, allowing you to call pg_ctl from any directory.

Step 1. Open a command prompt

• Press Win+R to open the Run dialog.
• Type cmd and press Ctrl+Shift+Enter to run the Command Prompt as an Administrator.

Step 2. Execute the pg_ctl command

Type the following pg_ctl command and press Enter:

pg_ctl -D "C:\Program Files\PostgreSQL\<version>\data" restart

Note that you need to replace the <version> with the actual version of your PostgreSQL and change the data directory path (“C:\Program Files\PostgreSQL\<version>\data“) if it is different.

For example, to restart PostgreSQL 16.x, you can execute the following command:

pg_ctl -D "C:\Program Files\PostgreSQL\16\data" restart

This command will restart PostgreSQL.