Save Explorer.exe Crash From Affecting All The Open Windows

Usually when my explorer.exe encounters a problem, it forces all the open explorer windows to close too. This causes a lot of frustration in some cases. This is due to the fact that by default only one instance of explorer handles all the tasks e.g., the desktop, start menu, opening files and folders etc. So if explorer.exe crashes, all the things relying on it crash including the open folders and desktop.
To fix this, you should always use different explorer.exe processes for each task. You can do this by going to Tools –> Folder Options –> View –> Check “Launch folder windows in a separate process –> Ok. This will start a separate explorer.exe process for the desktop and opening folders. Now if one instance crashes, it will not affect other one.
However, this comes with a little memory cost meaning that launching two explorer processes will cost a little more memory than usual (It requires approximately 8 MB of memory for explorer to run as a separate process). But it will be perfectly fine if you want stability over a little performance overhead.


Posted

in

by

Comments

3 responses to “Save Explorer.exe Crash From Affecting All The Open Windows”

  1. Sufi007

    Great Info-Thnx

  2. Anand.S

    A very useful tips to improve the stability of my OS. I am going to try it. Thanks

  3. Gabe

    This is an excellent tip for anyone with the memory to spare and looking to avoid the problems you’ve described. If you’ve got a 1gb of ram or more this is not a problem.
    Cheers