Windows provides several secret ways to exit the Explorer shell. They can be useful when you make Registry changes that affect Explorer or for shell developers when testing shell extensions. To save your time, you can add a special "Restart Explorer" command to the Desktop context menu. This will allow you to restart the Explorer shell with one click.
Tag: Exit Explorer
ExitExplorer and RestartExplorer – two tools to exit and restart the Explorer shell properly
My friends at MDL forums asked me to code two simple tools, one of them, to exit the Explorer shell in Windows 10 and the second one to restart the Explorer shell. Both tools are designed to be used in batch files and scripts, as requested. I would like to share them with you and explain why they are different from the usual ways people use to restart Explorer.
New Exit Explorer option in Windows 10 allows you to restart the Explorer shell properly
Windows 10 comes with a new secret option to exit the Explorer shell properly. Instead of writing a whole new post, I decided to update my awesome tutorial "How to properly restart the Explorer shell in Windows" with new information about that option. A restart of the Explorer shell is helpful after you make registry tweaks and or when you change new Windows settings which don't take effect unless you restart the shell. If you plan to stay abreast of the developments in the latest version of Windows and keep it under your control, I recommend checking out the article.
How to properly restart the Explorer shell in Windows
Windows provides several secret ways to exit the Explorer shell. They can be useful when you make registry changes that affect Explorer or for shell developers when testing shell extensions. In case you didn't know them, today I am going to share them with you.
Why you may want to restart Explorer
There are several reasons when you may want to exit the Explorer shell and start it again, such as:
- You are trying to uninstall some software with shell extensions, e.g. WinRAR. If you leave Explorer, all shell extensions will be unloaded from the shell and will be cleanly deleted by the uninstaller. All files that are locked for use by the Explorer.exe process will be released.
- If you applied some tweak which requires you to log off and log in back, in most cases, it is enough to only restart the shell.
Let's see how this can be done.
