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Occasionally the clock in the notification area of the taskbar stops working. If I hover over it I can see the analog clock view is correct but the digital readout is frozen. Today I tried to hide the clock and then re-show it but that seems to have made things worse. The icons in the rest of the task bar are shifted over and clicking on them doesn't seem to bring the correct window to focus. I have a Lenovo ThinkPad with some wireless connection and system update software installed that takes over some of the taskbar which may contribute to these problems.

If I log out of Windows or restart my machine, everything seems to be fine for awhile. However that means I need to close down everything I am working on, restart, etc.

Is there a way to restart the taskbar without exiting Windows? I know Windows does this occasionally when the taskbar stops responding but is there a way that I can force it to happen?

Brad Patton
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    In truth, I'd be more interested in why it does that than in what a workaround for restarting Explorer is. That's a much harder question to answer though. – Moshe Katz Apr 15 '13 at 18:01

8 Answers8

74

Open the start menu and then Ctrl+Shift+Right-click in any blank space above, around or on the "Shutdown" button will bring up an option to "Exit Explorer" as shown:

enter image description here

I originally found this on HowToGeek and have used it in Vista for the last year. It results in a much more graceful closure of Explorer without actually logging you out.

You will still need to open Task Manager in order to launch Explorer again though, Alex's answer details how you can quickly bring up the task manager to relaunch Explorer.

The same can be done on Windows 8 by doing the same action on the taskbar instead (thanks to Karl in the comments). This is presumably as the Start button is now missing.

Mokubai
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    Nice. All the little things hidden in Windows. – Brad Patton Apr 12 '13 at 18:17
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    It looks like you have to right-click on any blank space on the start menu, not the start button. – cpt_fink Apr 13 '13 at 01:28
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    That doesn't appear on my Win7 computer. Only 'Properties' is shown. – Macke Apr 13 '13 at 05:37
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    On Windows 8 Ctrl+Shift+Right-click works on an empty spot on the taskbar. – Karl Horky Apr 13 '13 at 09:57
  • This answer doesn't work on Windows 7, which is what this question is tagged with as an OS, making this not a working answer for the OS version cited. – StarPilot Apr 13 '13 at 12:08
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    @StarPilot As it helped the original query I would assume it did work and so works on vista, 7 and 8. Are you sure you are holding ctrl and shift while right clicking? The post i found it on specifically mentions windows 7. – Mokubai Apr 13 '13 at 14:29
  • I have windows 7 and tested this. It does NOT work on Windows 7. I made sure to properly follow directions. I am not the only person to post in this thread that it doesn't work on windows 7. Alex's answer does work on Windows 7. – StarPilot Apr 14 '13 at 01:20
  • @StarPilot it worked for me on my work laptop. I also just tested on my home PC and both options were there and it worked. I have x64 on both machines not sure if that makes a difference. – Brad Patton Apr 14 '13 at 02:41
  • Didn't work for me on my home Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit, and it didn't work for me on my work Windows 7 Professional 64 bit. UAC is on for my home machine, off for my work machine. Both are pure Win7 machines, no updates from prior OS. – StarPilot Apr 15 '13 at 03:26
  • Just in case your explorer really crashes, you won't even be able to access the start menu. And even if once you are able to get through this fancy method, again you have to go to task manager or command prompt to start it. Moreover, it is a version specific method and may not benefit the community in general (though it may be useful for the person who asked this as he used Windows 7 only). – Zeeshan Apr 15 '13 at 17:27
  • See http://www.ghacks.net/2012/08/09/restart-windows-explorer-explorer-exe-with-a-shortcut/ – shea Apr 16 '13 at 22:12
  • @Mokubai I just tested it on my Windows 7 Desktop PC and it works perfectly. – Simon Feb 25 '14 at 19:38
  • @StarPilot what do you mean "doesn't work" what happens. Do you mean you don't get the option to exit explorer? You do. Tested in Win 7 Ultimate 64 SP1 (though probably in any Win7) http://i.imgur.com/aMhZoQB.png – barlop Jun 23 '15 at 00:07
  • That's precisely what I mean. On some windows 7 systems, this option does not work. I have access to several windows 7 machines, and this only works on some, but not all, of them. – StarPilot Jun 23 '15 at 19:46
  • Works fine on my W7 x64. I just needed to use explorer's full path otherwise I was getting a normal Windows Explorer window. Thx to sparrowt below for the suggestion. – Dude named Ben Feb 20 '16 at 01:30
  • This approach doesn't work across RDP (at least not our version). You can start a cmd instance and type `explorer` after the TaskBar has *gone*. Using keystrokes across a remote session is likely to less reliable than a command line action *imho*. – will May 12 '16 at 22:53
  • Still works on Windows 10 x64 2H19 ; though I had to ctrl+shift+esc "run task" explorer afterward to get it back. – davenpcj May 07 '21 at 18:27
63

A quick and dirty way to restart the taskbar is to simply kill and restart the explorer process.

Ctrl+Shift+Esc go to the processes tab and look for explorer.exe. End the process, and select File > New Task (Run...). Enter explorer.exe into the field (specifically the filename "explorer.exe", you do not need to enter the full path and it may not work properly if you do), accept, and your taskbar will re-appear.

Community
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Mono
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  • +1 Thanks wish I could accept both answers. Yours helped me with restarting explorer. – Brad Patton Apr 12 '13 at 18:18
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    I would like to point out that while the other answer is good, this answer will work for any version of windows. (Question tagged a Win-7 though, so it's all good). – zeel Apr 13 '13 at 05:01
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    Note that if you kill the process (or processes, sometimes on Windows multiple `explorer.exe` processes are active), and then fire up `explorer.exe` again, the icons in the systray are not always restored properly. If you do the Ctrl+Shift+rightclick trick, the explorer will clean out icon caches before it shuts down and restore them properly when restarted. – Abel Apr 14 '15 at 23:41
  • thank you so much! This saved me from having to reboot my pc. – Jason S Mar 20 '17 at 16:18
  • The thing is that after this procedure not all system try icons are refreshed, e.g. the Notepad++ icon is gone and you have to kill the application and restart it to ever make the editor appear again. – kriegaex Dec 17 '18 at 02:35
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You could also create a batch file to automate it.

  1. From the start menu type notepad then press enter.

  2. Type the following in the new notepad. 

    taskkill /f /im explorer.exe
start explorer.exe

  3. Save the file as fixTaskbar.bat and save it on your desktop (or somewhere else easy to access).

When ever it has issues, you can simply double click on this file and it will restart it automatically.

EquipDev
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Jeff F.
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  • The batch window didn't close automatically after completion for me. v14t's solution did, however. Upvoted both! – Will Ediger Feb 10 '15 at 17:12
  • Added `start` before `explorer.exe` so script finishes. – EquipDev Mar 26 '18 at 08:56
  • The thing is that after this procedure not all system try icons are refreshed, e.g. the Notepad++ icon is gone and you have to kill the application and restart it to ever make the editor appear again. – kriegaex Dec 17 '18 at 02:35
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It can be done without creating a batch file, in a single command issued in the Run window (Windows+R) or in the Command Prompt (cmd.exe).

taskkill /f /im explorer.exe && start explorer.exe

It will terminate (end task) Windows Explorer (explorer.exe process) and then, if it's successfully terminated, will start it again.

Canadian Luke
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v14t
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2

Try restarting explorer.exe in any event of crashing of your desktop appearance. Kill explorer.exe from your task manager (assuming you are able to access it). Then start it again (new task option in task manager). By this way you don't need to restart the PC.

Zeeshan
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  • you can also start it by trying to access the start menu – ratchet freak Apr 13 '13 at 18:29
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    Not exactly. Once the explorer.exe is killed, you can't access the start menu to start it. Neither by the Windows key, nor by clicking at the point where start icon lies on taskbar. Regarding the answer by @Mokubai, there is no sense in doing a tricky dance (Ctrl+Shift simultaneously followed by a right click) once on start menu, and then again you have to open task manager to start it when your fancy Vista start menu is gone. Moreover the method applies to selected versions of Windows only. Best way is use task manager as you can kill and start the process at one place. – Zeeshan Apr 14 '13 at 06:08
  • So true! You can't use Windows + R to get to the run box once Explorer is closed, so may as well use Task Manager all the way through. As nice as the Control + Shift + Right click trick is... it doesn't appear to do *anything* that simply closing the Explorer process manually doesn't. – Austin ''Danger'' Powers Mar 02 '14 at 09:56
  • @Zeeshan Use the @ symbol when addressing somebody. Otherwise it looks like a comment on your answer – barlop Jun 23 '15 at 00:03
2

I sometimes notice that my taskbar occasionally freezes graphically too. This particular fix works for me:

Restart the Desktop Window Manager service. This can be done via services.msc, or type in net stop uxsms and net start uxsms in an elevated command prompt.

Bigbio2002
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2

You could also do this from a python script:

import os
from time import sleep

os.system("taskkill /f /im explorer.exe")  
sleep(3)
os.system("start C:\Windows\explorer.exe")

Note: you have to supply the full path: C:\Windows\explorer.exe otherwise it opens a folder window instead of restoring the taskbar.

sparrowt
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0

None of the answers above really helped. My task bar was gone, and I needed a keyboard based solution to get the taskbar back. What I ended up doing was:

A) Use CTRL-ALT-DELETE and select the task manager.

B) Use File->New Task(Run...) and enter explorer.exe

Your task bar should be back.

eclectic923
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