In this situation, the quickest way to deal with the issue is to restart the explorer.exe process.
What Is Explorer.exe?
Think of explorer.exe as a process serving as the shell. It’s actively used by File Explorer, the Start Menu, the notification area, the taskbar, and your desktop. If you notice that explorer.exe has a tendency to break often, it’s good practice to set up a Restart Explorer option inside your context menu. This way, whenever explorer.exe breaks, you’ll be able to just restart explorer.exe without the need to restart your computer. If you’d like this sort of functionality on your Windows 11 computer, this article will walk you through the process of Adding or Removing the ‘Restart Explorer’ option inside the desktop context menu of Windows 11. We’re going to help you create two different options to restart explorer.exe via the context menu:
Restart Explorer Now – This option will instantly restart the explorer.exe process.Restart Explorer with Pause – This option will pop open a CMD prompt window telling you that explorer.exe has been stopped and wait for you to take action before restarting it again – This method is helpful in those situations where you need to do one additional thing before you can safely restart Explorer.exe.
Important: The instructions below will require you to be signed in with an administrator account in order to add or remove the control menu. But once you establish it, all users that are currently signed in to that Windows 11 computer will be able to use it.
How to Add the ‘Restart Explorer’ Option to Desktop Context Menu
How to Remove the ‘Restart Explorer’ Option to Desktop Context Menu
How to Add or Remove the Manage Item on the File Explorer Context Menu?How to: Add Take Ownership To the Context Menu on Windows 10Disable Context Menus in Windows 10 File Explorer, Start Menu & TaskbarHow to Add Boot to Advanced Startup Options to Context Menu?
