Windows Explorer – How to Perform a Clean Shutdown

windows-explorer

Windows Explorer is the default shell under Windows (since Windows 95).

Sometimes you need to restart it, so my usual way is to kill it using the Task Manager (Ctrl+Shift+Esc, click on Processes, select explorer.exe, click on End Process).

Is there a way to cleanly shut down / close Windows Explorer without logging out?

Best Answer

I know you can do this in Windows 7, and perhaps Vista by holding Ctrl+Shift and right clicking on the background of the opened start menu. You will get two options, "Properties" and "Exit Explorer":

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I don't know for certain which version of windows this was introduced in, perhaps someone else does?

In Windows 8, Windows 8.1 and Windows 10, you have to do the Ctrl-Shift-right-click on an empty part of the task bar to get the "Exit Explorer" option.

Related Solutions

Windows – Killing explorer.exe when a process starts and restarting it when a process ends

I've had a similar problem with a game I have. You can easily create a short batch script that will kill and restartexplorer.exe and then run the batch script whne you want to start the game. Here's the script startgame.bat:

@echo off
taskkill /f /IM explorer.exe
game.exe
Start explorer.exe

Obviously replace game.exe with your exe. Place the batch file next to your game exe and run it instead.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Windows – Killing explorer.exe when a process starts and restarting it when a process ends

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