There are a number of times we are asked when we install any application, upgrade our systems drivers or set-up a new windows setting to restart the system, so that Windows can register the changes and perform the required changes to the registry and as well as it’s configuration files.
Forget that now.
The tip we share now, can be used to replicate a system startup without actually restarting the system and making you wait for the time until the system shuts down and again restarts. There goes our most important 40 secs. of our life. Rather than an actual restart, you can just kill the Windows Explorer shell and make the OS re-read the registry, which the installed application actually requires.
For Windows XP and Vista, the following code snippet is used to kill the explorer and restart it without any hassles when any post-installation requires a restart.
All you need to do is,
1. Open Command Prompt by using Win + R and typing ‘cmd’.
2. In the Command Prompt window, type ‘tskill /f /im explorer.exe’ without quotes, please.
3. This command momentarily closes the explorer.exe running in the background.
4. Now, type ‘explorer.exe’ in the same command prompt to restart the explorer. And you are done.
No restart required now. You can download the batch file which performs the same actions from
Now, lets, look at the same procedure when Windows XP Home is considered.
The steps are the same except that, you type ‘tskill /a explorer.exe’(without quotes). No need to again mention ‘explorer.exe’ , if you are doing this Windows XP Home edition OR you can download the batch file from .
One point to note here is: Yeah, yeah, You need to have Administrator rights to run these batch files or commands. Tsk!! If not, you can right click the batch file in Vista, and choose ‘Start as Administrator’.
Simple!!Let us know.
Explorer.exe is a Windows essential process, if you want your computer to work properly, you must leave it
This is an excellent tip. Saves time and energy. Don’t use it unless your computer is idle, or else you may lose data. Instead of typing in these long commands, though, I end explorer through the task manager, which doesn’t close with explorer, and under “File->New task run” I simply enter “explorer” without the .exe extention.
Yes, it is. But killing it then restarting it causes no harm whatsoever. The only visual effect caused by this is that the toolbar disappears and any windows explorer windows close (what a mouthful, but just My Documents etc.). When you restart explorer.exe the toolbar reopens as it would upon system startup – try it and see for yourself!