Restarting explorer does not restore taskbar

I've been having a really annoying problem with explorer in Windows 7. Sometimes I need to restart explorer, for example to help testing software I'm developing.

I know I can stop explorer.exe (either through the task manager or through the Ctrl-Shift-Right Click on menu / Exit Explorer thing) and restart it through the task manager. That used to work just fine on XP. But on my Windows 7 box it just pops up a file browsing window. No taskbar, no start menu, no desktop.

Of course I can logout or restart to get the taskbar back, but that gets annoying really fast.

Any clues to what's going on here? Is something preventing explorer from restarting the taskbar? What's the mechanism used by explorer to determine whether it should do so?

[Update] I'm not looking for alternative ways to restart explorer. I found plenty of those while Googling for a solution to my problem. I need to know why explorer is not restoring my desktop icons and taskbar after it is restarted.

Marnix van Valen

Posted 2011-12-30T10:43:18.690

Reputation: 223

1Did you end up finding a working solution? – Ivo Flipse – 2012-07-15T11:33:57.950

1Make sure all explorer.exe processes for your user are killed before you restart it – mavhc – 2011-12-30T13:38:52.493

Thanks, I tried that but it doesn't help. – Marnix van Valen – 2011-12-30T13:46:18.553

Press > Windows + R and enter > explorer.exe – Daniel – 2011-12-30T11:49:31.993

4No, that does not work. Windows + R only works when explorer is already running. – Marnix van Valen – 2011-12-30T13:15:53.537

Answers

Just had the same problem. It seems that when you run explorer.exe without full path it starts as C:\windows\explorer.exe /factory,{682159d9-c321-47ca-b3f1-30e36b2ec8b9} -Embedding, as you see, with parameters.

The solution I found, is to specify full path to C:\Windows\explorer.exe. This should run explorer without parameters. And starts Windows Taskbar.

And I really don't know, why such behaviour happens, cause before it worked fine without full path.

Pavel

Posted 2011-12-30T10:43:18.690

Reputation: 126

"And I really don't know, why such behaviour happens, cause before it worked fine without full path." -> the same happened to me. Have you found some cause(s) for it since you wrote the answer? – Franck Dernoncourt – 2018-01-14T05:24:05.583

Press Ctrl + Shift + ESC. Go into Processes and stop Explorer.exe, as you already described. Then go to Applications --> New Task, type in explorer and press Enter.

That should work, if not try and go to Google. Search for explorer.exe and replace it. Good luck!

Friend of Kim

Posted 2011-12-30T10:43:18.690

Reputation: 1 301

Do you have 64 or 32 bit? – Friend of Kim – 2011-12-30T14:04:06.673

Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit – Marnix van Valen – 2011-12-30T14:08:30.387

Press ctrl+shift+esc to open task manager
Click new task and type regedit and press enter
In registry editor, go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon
Beside the string value Shell the value data should be explorer.exe. Any value other than that can cause this error.

Eugene

Posted 2011-12-30T10:43:18.690

Reputation: 1

I had the same problem, and thanks to the answer by Jens Erat, I was able to find another solution! I've been repairing computers for years and have not seen this problem. Unfortunately, Jens' answer was not what did it for me, but while I was in that part of the registry, I saw a problem with the userinit key. The key had "c:\windows\system32\Userinit.exe."

The answer was to simply delete the extraneous period at the end of the path and start explorer again. Solved. Such a nice fix. I wonder how it ever got messed up in the first place. MalwareBytes did detect 50+ objects, however, which may have had something to do with it.

Anyways - a haiku for everyone to enjoy:

Yesterday it worked.
Today it is not working.
Windows is like that.

Jeremiah

Posted 2011-12-30T10:43:18.690

Reputation: 1

-1

I did not want to logout or restart and attempting to launch explorer via new task was not working despite all processes being terminated. The solution for me was to browse to the Windows Directory (C:\Windows) and right click on explorer.exe - run as administrator. ;)

Nevo

Posted 2011-12-30T10:43:18.690

Reputation: 1