On 18 Dec 2004 at 22:33, Don Penlington wrote:

> Mary writes:
>
> <<This may be a dumb question, but is there any way to just reload the
> "Explorer" part of Windows 98SE?>>
>
> Yes you can. Find Explorer.exe in the Windows folder, and put a shortcut on
> the desktop.  Won't help you much, though.

  Besides manifesting as "Explorer" windows, explorer.exe is also the
program which provides the desktop.  The copy of explorer providing this
function will be reloaded when you kill it via the Ctrl-Alt-Del list, as
Mary has found, but not all trnsient details of programs already running --
such as their icons in the system tray -- will reappear.

  Clicking on a shortcut to launch an additional copy of explorer.exe won't
"reload" the instance that is running the desktop.  But I suspect that what
Mary really had in mind was re-installing explorer.exe in case the file had
gotten corrupted.

  It's certainly possible that the file has gotten corrupted, but it's
rather unlikely.  The Windows desktop accomodates all sorts of extensions
and add-ons, some included with Windows and many offered by third parties,
and it is most likely that one of these add-ons is actually running into
problems -- OR the linkage in the registry that tells Explorer about some
add-on.

  So replacing explorer.exe is probably not going to help either.  It's
possible that some of the utilities out there for registry repair/cleanup
might help.  The only one I've ever actually used is Norton's SystemWorks,
but some people have had issues with other parts of that product, and it's
probably overkill for this situation.

Dave Gillett

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