This tutorial should work for all major hardware manufacturers that include Windows 7, Windows 8/8.1 and Windows 10 in their products (Dell, HP, Acer, Asus, Toshiba, Lenovo, Samsung, etc.).
If your taskbar, system tray, or Start menu is malfunctioning, you might be tempted to restart your PC. Instead, you can usually just restart Windows Explorer, and Windows makes this a lot easier.
Windows Explorer (Explorer.exe) is a program management process that provides the graphical interface you use to interact with most of Windows: the Start menu, taskbar, notification area, and Explorer of files. Sometimes one of these elements that make up the Windows graphical shell may start to act strangely or even crash. Just as you can close and restart a malfunctioning application, you can also close and restart Windows Explorer. Restarting Windows Explorer can also be handy if you've just installed a new application or applied a registry tweak that would normally require you to restart your PC. Restarting Explorer doesn't always work in these cases, but it's simple enough to try it first if you want to avoid a full restart.
Task Manager offers the traditional way to restart Windows Explorer. It's been revised for Windows 8 and 10, so we have instructions for you whether you're using them or using Windows 7.
In Windows 8 or 10, open Task Manager by right-clicking any empty area on your taskbar, then clicking "Task Manager." You can also press Start and search for "task manager," which might be more useful to you if you're looking at the Start screen instead of the Windows 8 desktop. And if you prefer keyboard shortcuts, just press CtrlShiftEsc.
If your Task Manager window looks like the example below, click "More Details" at the bottom to see the detailed interface.
The “Processes” tab of the Task Manager window shows you the applications and background processes running on your PC. Scroll down the list of what's running and look for "Windows Explorer." If you currently have a File Explorer window open, you'll see it at the very top in the "Applications" section. Otherwise, you'll find it at the bottom of the "Background Processes" section. To restart, simply select “Windows Explorer” and then click the “Restart” button.
That's all you should have to do. It may take a few seconds and things like your taskbar and Start menu may disappear momentarily, but when it restarts things should behave better and you can exit Task Manager.
This tutorial will apply to computers, laptops, desktops and tablets running Windows 10, Windows 8/8.1 and Windows 7 operating systems. Works for all major computer manufacturers (Dell, HP, Acer, Asus , Toshiba, Lenovo, Samsung).
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