[SOLVED] What happens when I restart Windows Explorer from the Task Manager?

Jan 15, 2019
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Every once in a while, certain operations on my PC slows down. Right-clicking on an image on a browser and hitting 'Save as' may take three to five seconds before the Save window pops up, when at its fastest it takes less than a second, for example.

I've been getting around this by restarting Windows Explorer in the Task Manager, and it works perfectly. I'm not looking for a better way to fix this, but I am curious to know why exactly these operations slow down, and what exactly happens 'under the hood' when I restart Windows Explorer manually.
 
Solution
it will run defrag in any idle time but if PC doesn't ever get any idle time, it can't run it. I wouldn't defrag ssd as its not needed (windows defrags 1 part of ssd every month automatically) but there is no harm in running it on hdd, worth a try to see if it helps

Colif

Win 11 Master
Moderator
it just reloads the desktop. restarting explorer is like shutting down any application and restarting it, it can fix little problems but identifying what is causing the problem is probably better than needing to restart explorer.

Do you have an ssd or hdd? If hdd, have you defragged it recently?
 
Jan 15, 2019
2
0
10


I have both, with the OS on an SSD and most others on HDDs. My understanding is that W10 automatically does disk cleanups semi-frequently, so I don't need to defrag it manually.
 

Colif

Win 11 Master
Moderator
it will run defrag in any idle time but if PC doesn't ever get any idle time, it can't run it. I wouldn't defrag ssd as its not needed (windows defrags 1 part of ssd every month automatically) but there is no harm in running it on hdd, worth a try to see if it helps
 
Solution