stop explorer.exe from starting with windows?

[danjrowe27]

Is it possible to stop windows explorer from starting with windows?

 

[dalaran]

Why do you want to do that? explorer.exe is probably one of the most important windows processes, without it windows itself becomes mostly unusable. So my first best guess would be to say that no it's not possible or at the very least not advisable.

 

[justin.m.beauvais]

I know it was possible on much older versions of Windows, but why would you want to? It is pretty much the front end of the graphical user interface. Were you trying to apply your own custom GUI? Otherwise it'd serve no real purpose to keep Explorer from starting. Windows would be largely unusable.

 

[Colif]

The 1 million dollar question... why indeed

explorer.exe is the Windows Program Manager or Windows Explorer. It manages the Windows Graphical Shell including the Start menu, taskbar, desktop, and File Manager. By removing this process the graphical interface for Windows will disappear.

https://www.neuber.com/taskmanager/process/explorer.exe.html

Or do you mean Internet Exploder?

 

[danjrowe27]

The 1 million dollar question... why indeed

explorer.exe is the Windows Program Manager or Windows Explorer. It manages the Windows Graphical Shell including the Start menu, taskbar, desktop, and File Manager. By removing this process the graphical interface for Windows will disappear.

https://www.neuber.com/taskmanager/process/explorer.exe.html

Or do you mean Internet Exploder?

Because I have my PC set to automatically boot steam into big picture startup, and my clunky ass desktop looks like shit and it shows until Steam loads up. I'm going to create a task to start explorer.exe AFTER steam boots through the task scheduler.

 

[danjrowe27]

Why would I ask how to disable explorer.exe at startup if I didn't know what it did?

 

[Colif]

you could do a selective startup in MSCONFIG, untick explorer.,exe in the services tab and click apply. That was how it worked in win 7. I can't find a lot on if that would work in 10

we do get people who come in and ask to do things they shouldn't. Just had to check

 

[danjrowe27]

you could do a selective startup in MSCONFIG, untick explorer.,exe in the services tab and click apply. That was how it worked in win 7. I can't find a lot on if that would work in 10

we do get people who come in and ask to do things they shouldn't. Just had to check

Can't find explorer.exe in there. My best guess is it's somewhere in the regedit but not sure.

 

[danjrowe27]

I've got it! Answer here: https://superuser.com/questions/1372355/delaying-windows-10-shell-from-automatically-starting#comment2066375_1372355

 

[johnbl]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_alternative_shells_for_Windows

edit reg key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE -> Software -> Microsoft -> Windows NT -> CurrentVersion -> Winlogon

take a look at the keys. there is a key for alternateshells
there is even a place to change the name of the main shell (explorer.exe)

it is not any type of license agreement that would require you to run the explorer.exe shell.

you should be able to set up a autologin then run a cmd.exe shell of your own.
that would give you access to all of the system functions if you need them.

I would think you could remove the explorer.exe shell and leave it blank.
then use the task switcher to spawn a copy of explorer.exe if you needed it for something.


if you want the program to never to be run you can deny execute permissions to all users/system

 

[Colif]

MERGED QUESTION
Question from danjrowe27 : "Delay explorer.exe from starting on startup?"

Is it possible to delay the windows explorer shell from starting on startup?

anybody?

https://superuser.com/questions/1372355/delaying-windows-10-shell-from-automatically-starting#comment2066375_1372355