How to Restart Power BI Service

When your Power BI reports are acting up - visuals not loading, data refusing to refresh, or the whole service feeling sluggish - your first instinct might be to look for a big red “restart” button. If you’ve spent any time searching, you’ve realized it doesn't quite exist for the cloud-based Power BI Service. This article will walk you through exactly what “restarting” means in the context of Power BI and provide actionable steps to resolve the most common issues, from simple user-level fixes to restarting specific components like your data gateway.

Why Would You Need to "Restart" Power BI?

You can't actually reboot Microsoft's cloud servers, but the phrase "restarting Power BI" typically refers to resolving a problem that's blocking you from getting your work done. The real goal is to clear whatever is causing the logjam so you can get back to your data.

Here are some of the most common reasons you might look for a restart solution:

• Reports or Dashboards Won't Load: You might see a spinning wheel that never resolves, a blank screen, or an error message that isn’t very helpful.

• Scheduled Data Refreshes Are Failing: Your daily or hourly data refresh jobs are failing with cryptic error messages, leaving you with stale data.

• Visuals Are Displaying Old Data: You know new data exists, and the refresh was successful, but the report visuals aren't updating to reflect it.

• Sluggish Performance: Every click and interaction within the service takes an unusually long time to process.

• Permission Changes Aren't Taking Effect: You've granted a colleague access to a workspace or report, but they still can't see it after several minutes.

These issues don't always mean the Power BI Service is "down." More often, the problem lies somewhere in the chain of communication between your computer, your data sources, and Microsoft's servers. The following sections break down how to troubleshoot at each level.

For End-Users: A No-Tears "Soft Restart"

If you're a user consuming or building reports, the problem is most often local to your browser or session. These are the quickest and easiest steps to resolve about 80% of interface-related issues. Think of this as the classic "turn it off and on again" for your browser session.

1. Try a Hard Page Refresh

A simple press of the F5 key or the refresh button doesn't always cut it. Your browser is designed to cache (store) parts of websites to make them load faster in the future. Sometimes, this cached data becomes outdated or corrupted, causing display or performance issues in Power BI.

A hard refresh forces your browser to ignore the cache and download a completely fresh version of the page from the Power BI server.

• On Windows/Linux (Chrome, Edge, Firefox): Press Ctrl + F5 or Ctrl + Shift + R.

• On Mac (Chrome, Safari, Firefox): Press Cmd + Shift + R.

2. Clear Your Browser Cache and Cookies

If a hard refresh doesn't solve it, the next step is to clear your browser's cache and cookies more thoroughly. Stored cookies can sometimes cause authentication problems, while a corrupted cache can prevent new report elements from loading correctly.

How to Clear Cache in Google Chrome:

1. Click the three dots in the top-right corner.

2. Go to More tools > Clear browsing data...

3. In the "Time range" dropdown, select All time.

4. Check the boxes for "Cookies and other site data" and "Cached images and files."

5. Click Clear data.

How to Clear Cache in Microsoft Edge:

1. Click the three dots in the top-right corner.

2. Go to Settings > Privacy, search, and services.

3. Under the "Clear browsing data" section, click Choose what to clear.

4. In the "Time range" dropdown, select All time.

5. Check the boxes for "Cookies and other site data" and "Cached images and files."

6. Click Clear now.

After clearing the cache, close your browser completely and reopen it before logging back into Power BI.

3. Use an Incognito or Private Window

Before you clear your entire cache, you can try opening Power BI in an Incognito (Chrome) or Private (Edge/Firefox) window. These modes don't use your existing cookies or cache and often disable browser extensions.

If Power BI works perfectly in a private window, it's a strong indicator that the problem is either with your browser's stored data or an interfering browser extension. If extensions are the suspect, try disabling them one by one to find the culprit.

4. Sign Out and Sign Back In

It sounds simple, but explicitly signing out of your Microsoft 365 account and signing back in can often resolve session token and authentication issues. This ensures you're starting with a fresh, validated session, which can sometimes fix lingering permission problems.

For Admins: Checking on Wider Power BI Service Health Issues

If the user-level tricks aren't working for you or multiple team members are experiencing issues, the problem might not be local. It could be an issue with the Power BI Service itself. As a Power BI admin or an M365 admin, you have access to tools that check for service-wide outages.

Check the Power BI Support Page

Microsoft maintains a support page that lists known issues and service outages. This should always be your first destination to see if your problem is part of a larger, acknowledged issue.

You can find real-time information here: https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/support/

Review Service Health in the Microsoft 365 Admin Center

For a more detailed view, you can check the Service Health dashboard within the Microsoft 365 Admin Center. This dashboard provides the status of all Microsoft services associated with your tenant, including Power BI.

1. Navigate to https://admin.microsoft.com and sign in with an admin account.

2. In the left-hand navigation pane, go to Health > Service health.

3. Look for any advisories or incidents related to Power BI. Microsoft will provide details about the scope of the problem and an estimated time for resolution.

If you find an active incident here, your only course of action is to wait for Microsoft's engineering teams to resolve it. There's no "restart" you can perform on your end.

How to Actually Restart the On-Premises Data Gateway

This is arguably the most common situation where users need to perform a literal "restart" on a piece of the Power BI ecosystem. The On-Premises Data Gateway is a software application you install on a server within your network to act as a secure bridge between data sources on your local network (like a SQL Server database) and the cloud-based Power BI Service.

When scheduled data refreshes fail, particularly with connection or credential errors, the gateway is often the cause.

When to Restart the Gateway

• Your scheduled refreshes are failing with timeout or connectivity errors.

• The gateway status in Power BI shows as "Offline."

• Performance is extremely slow when interacting with reports built on-premise data sources.

Step-by-Step: Restarting the Gateway Service

You’ll need administrator access to the computer or server where the gateway is installed.

Using the Services App (GUI Method)

1. Log into the server where the gateway is installed.

2. Press the Windows Key, type services.msc, and hit Enter. This will open the Services application.

3. Scroll down a long list of services to find the On-premises data gateway service.

4. Right-click on the service name.

5. Select Restart from the context menu.

The service will stop and then start again, usually within less than a minute. You can then trigger a manual refresh in the Power BI Service to confirm if the issue is resolved.

Using the Command Prompt (CLI Method)

For those who prefer the command line, this is an even faster way to restart the service.

1. Open Command Prompt or PowerShell as an Administrator.

2. To stop the service, type the following command and press Enter:

1. Wait for the confirmation that the service has stopped successfully.

2. To start the service again, type:

1. Wait for the confirmation that the service started successfully.

This method accomplishes the exact same thing as the GUI method and is easily scriptable if needed.

Final Thoughts

As you can see, "restarting" the Power BI Service is less about a single action and more about a methodical troubleshooting process. Depending on your role, the solution can range from a simple browser refresh to restarting a gateway service or just staying informed about service-wide issues. Working through these steps helps isolate where the problem lies so you can get back to analyzing your data.

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