At times you may need to restart explorer.exe for some reason. Well, you can always use the Task Manager or create a shortcut to restart explorer or follow this method to kill Windows Explorer in 3 clicks. Maybe you customize a lot, or your explorer hangs or freezes frequently and needs to restart explorer often, or perhaps you don’t want to go through all these multiple clicks to restart explorer.exe. RightClick Restart Explorer is a simple tool that adds Restart explorer to your right-click context menu.
Right-Click Restart Explorer adds Restart Explorer option to Context Menu
Download and run this portable freeware app. Click on Install to add the Restart Explorer option to your context menu. The next time you want to restart explorer, right-click and choose Restart Explorer, and your explorer.exe will restart. You can also use the same tool to remove this option by clicking on the Uninstall option.
Download Restart Explorer
Lee Whittington has developed RightClick Restart Explorer for The Windows Club. Donations made go to its developer Lee and not to TheWindowsClub.
How to Restart Explorer from Command Line?
You can use the TaskKill tool from the command line to first kill the explorer and then use the start command to launch the explorer. TaskKill can terminate any program running on the PC. Some programs may need admin permission, so it would be best to launch the command prompt with admin permission.
How to Edit Right-click Context Menu?
You can add almost anything to the context using the registry or any context menu editor tools. The tools include Ultimate Windows Customizer, ContextEdit, ShellExtView or ShellMenuView, Easy Context Menu, MenuMaid, and File Menu Tools.
What happens when you Restart File Explorer?
When you restart File Explorer, it closes all open windows and restarts. This can be helpful if you’re experiencing problems with File Explorer and need to start fresh. It will also refresh your desktop, which sometimes brings up the missing icons.
It might be a good idea to install it in the SHIFT+Right-Click menu, as it’s an option that we don’t need often.
Also, I suggest to add an option to clear the Explorer icons cache, as most of the time, when we need to restart Explorer, it’s because its icon cache is outdated and it displays bad icons.
Currently, I use this batch to force Explorer to rebuild its icon cache:
@echo off
title Rebuild Icon Cache
Start taskmgr.exe
echo Follow this procedure to rebuild the Windows icon cache.
echo 1. Close ALL Explorer windows.
echo 2. In the Task Manager, kill Explorer.exe.
echo 3. Finally, activate this window and press any key to continue.
pause
CD /d %userprofile%AppDataLocal
ATTRIB -A IconCache.db
DEL IconCache.db /a
echo The icon cache has been cleared.
echo I will now reload your desktop.
pause
Start Explorer.exe
Thanks for the suggestions r0lz. I’ll update soon as I free moment. :)
Thanks
http://twitter.com/#!/kurtumi/status/94893542752780288
I’ve been using the reg hack from
http://thecustomizewindows.com/2011/05/add-restart-explorer-option-in-right-click-context-menu-in-windows-7/
It’s not always the right-click function works as Explorer (?) has frozen completely. Will be the same with RightClick Restart Explorer v1?
Japp: I haven’t had Explorer freeze completely so I can’t verify that it will still work if it does. The application is not the same as the scripts though as those use Batch Files and Reg Scripts to Restart Explorer. This app works the exact same as Kill Process does then once shutdown starts it back. :)
Well, only one way to find out :)
Deleted the reg entry I had and installed RightClick Restart Explorer v1
Is this tool supposed to work on XP too, or it is created only for Windows 7?
I tried to use it on my XP SP3 32-bit machine but it didn’t add the Restart Explorer option to my desktop context-menu.
When I clicked on Install button, it added this key to my Registry:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREClassesDesktopBackgroundShellRestart Explorer
Name: Type: Data:
(Default) REG_SZ Restart Explorer
icon REG_SZ C:WINDOWSRestart Explorer.exe
and its subkey:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREClassesDesktopBackgroundShellRestart Explorercommand
Name: Type: Data:
(Default) REG_SZ “C:WINDOWSRestart Explorer.exe”
And, of course, it added the Restart Explorer.exe file to my C:WINDOWS folder.
But, unfortunately, the Restart Explorer option hasn’t appeared in my right-click menu.
So, I’d like to know: is this tool created for Windows 7 only, or it should work on XP also?
I would like this tool to work on my 32-bits Vista, please
keep posted amazing
windows 7 explorer.exe I can not work and frozen
when i want to open the file is always an error occurs
I want to try to restart the explorer
and also scan for viruses
Many thanks!
I was looking for a program like this. But it’s only active ad the desktop, I liked it more when constantly.
Happy Hollydays & Best Wishes 2013!
To everyone!
is this still working?
These things may be true for you, but not for everyone. I need to restart explorer quite often & it’s also never because of the icon cache. There are other utilities out there to repair the icon cache/restart it, but this is a utility for restarting explorer & should remain as such. :)
these are bloatwares…memory hogging apps…don’t install it
This tool RCRE is a zipped portable freeware – and does NOT include any bundled software. They are not memory-hogging at all. LOL this one just adds a context menu item.