How to Restart Explorer.exe

Windows 7 is a fairly new Microsoft Operation system, so there's bound to be a few bugs here and there. One bug in Windows 7 that I have noticed is sometimes the desktop does not auto-refresh.

For example, if I have a folder on my desktop and I delete it, sometimes the folder will still be sitting on my desktop. The folder was actually deleted, but the folder icon still remains on the desktop.

At first, I would just do a full restart of my computer to solve the problem. But after a while it was just too big a hassle to have to restart my computer every time the desktop didn't refresh on its own.

After doing some experimenting I was able to figure out a faster solution than restarting the computer. The solution I found was to stop the "explorer.exe" process, and then restarting it again.

Unfortunately, this isn't going to stop the problem for good. However, it is a solution for when the desktop does not refresh on its own.

The first step is to stop the explorer.exe process so when can restart it. You can stop the explorer.exe process through the Task Manager, or you can do it this way as well

- Open the Start Menu
- Hold down the SHIFT and CTRL buttons
- Right Click on a blank area of the Taskbar
- A new window will appear, then select Exit Explorer

Doing those steps will stop the Explorer.exe process and you will notice that your Taskbar will disappear.

To restart the explorer.exe process we need to first access the Task Manager by pressing the CTRL+ALT+DELETE buttons at the same time.

Next go to the File menu --> Click New Task and then type explorer.exe into the box that appears and hit enter.

Your explorer.exe process will then start, your Taskbar will re-appear, and your Desktop will auto-refresh like it should!