There may be times when you may want to terminate explorer.exe. Maybe your Explorer hangs or freezes frequently, and you need to exit or restart explorer.exe. To do this, you will normally start the Task Manager. Select explorer.exe from the processes, and click on the End Task button.
Exit Explorer using Taskbar Context Menu
But did you know that the Windows 10 Taskbar too offers this option? This is not exactly a new option but has been around for a while. If you simply right-click on the Taskbar, you will not see this option.
To see it, you will have to press Ctrl+Shift and then right-click. You will then see the Exit Explorer option.
Windows 10 offers you something more! It even offers the option to terminate Explorer from the Start.
You need to go to the Start Screen, press Ctrl+Shift and then right-click. You will then see the option to Exit Explorer.
In the earlier version of Windows, you needed to do the following to restart Explorer – Press the keyboard combination Ctrl+Shift+Esc to launch Task Manager > Open the File menu > Choose Run New Task > Type explorer.exe > Click OK.
Windows Task Manager lets you restart Explorer using the Task Manager context menu.
There are several other ways where you can exit or even restart the Windows File Explorer. For instance, you could even restart Windows Explorer easily with a shortcut, or you could use Right Click Restart Explorer to add it to your desktop context menu. There is another interesting way where you could kill Windows Explorer.exe in 3 clicks.
Take your pick.
