How-to: Exit Explorer safely in Vista and XP

Your desktop hangs, or you want to apply a trick which requires Explorer to be restarted? No, you don’t need to log off and back on, neither to reboot. Exiting Windows Explorer and restarting it will be sufficient. Here is how you do it safely, without killing the process.

Vista-rians go here:

1. Right-click your taskbar, and choose “Task Manager”. Leave its window open.
2. Open the Windows Vista start menu – it should be in Windows Vista mode, not in Classic mode. Now hold down the Ctrl and Shift keys on your keyboard, and right-click the blank area above the Standby/Shutdown buttons.
3. In the appearing context menu, click the item “Exit Explorer”.
4. In the Windows Task Manager window, choose “File”, “New Task (Run…)”.
5. Enter “explorer”. After pressing “OK”, it gets restarted and everything is fine again.

Err – you’re on Windows XP?

1. Right-click your taskbar, and choose “Task Manager”. Leave its window open.
2. Open the Windows XP start menu, and choose “Turn Off Computer…”.
3. Now hold down the Ctrl, Alt, and Shift keys on your keyboard, and click the Cancel button in the Shutdown dialog. Explorer will quit.
4. In the Windows Task Manager window, choose “File”, “New Task (Run…)”.
5. Enter “explorer”. After pressing “OK”, it gets restarted and everything is fine again.