explorer.exe is taking up 2GB of memory. I don’t even know what it does, but is it safe to end it?
44 Answers
It is "safe" to end it. Task manager has a special option "Restart" that may be preferable.
Explorer.exe handles your explorer windows as well as your taskbar/start menu systems as well as general file browser.
At best killing explorer.exe will close your file browser windows, at worst it will close your taskbar as well.
If when you kill Explorer your taskbar goes away then you can simply run explorer again from the Task Manager manu or Win+R.
Running it again should restore everything and your start menu will simply appear back the way it was before.
It will close open folders and make the task bar disappear, you can restart it instead of ending it but that's available on windows 8 and later, if you decide to end it you can click on "file" on the task manager and then new task and write explorer.exe and it will open the explorer again
If you end process, then all things will disappear and show only task manger and black screen at background.
Rather than rebooting, the simple way is file<new task<type explorer, and then every thing will be fine.
If you will end an multiple of explorer.exe, Taskbar, windows and desktop icons will dissapear. After reboot everything will go normal. Expect that windows where you ended explorer.exe will not dissapear.
