How to programmatically restart windows explorer process

After parsing some of the earlier answers and doing a bit of research, I've created a little complete example in C#. This closes the explorer shell then waits for it to completely shut down and restarts it. Hope this helps, there's a lot of interesting info in this thread.

using System;using System.Collections.Generic;using System.Linq;using System.Text;using System.Runtime.InteropServices;using System.Diagnostics;using System.Threading;namespace RestartExplorer{class Program{    [DllImport("user32.dll", SetLastError = true)]    static extern bool PostMessage(IntPtr hWnd, [MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.U4)] uint Msg, IntPtr wParam, IntPtr lParam);    [DllImport("user32.dll", SetLastError = true)]    static extern IntPtr FindWindow(string lpClassName, string lpWindowName);    const int WM_USER = 0x0400; //http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms644931(v=vs.85).aspx    static void Main(string[] args)    {        try        {            var ptr = FindWindow("Shell_TrayWnd", null);            Console.WriteLine("INIT PTR: {0}", ptr.ToInt32());            PostMessage(ptr, WM_USER + 436, (IntPtr)0, (IntPtr)0);            do            {                ptr = FindWindow("Shell_TrayWnd", null);                Console.WriteLine("PTR: {0}", ptr.ToInt32());                if (ptr.ToInt32() == 0)                {                    Console.WriteLine("Success. Breaking out of loop.");                    break;                }                Thread.Sleep(1000);            } while (true);        }        catch (Exception ex)        {            Console.WriteLine("{0} {1}", ex.Message, ex.StackTrace);        }        Console.WriteLine("Restarting the shell.");        string explorer = string.Format("{0}\\{1}", Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("WINDIR"), "explorer.exe");        Process process = new Process();                   process.StartInfo.FileName = explorer;        process.StartInfo.UseShellExecute = true;        process.Start();        Console.ReadLine();    }}}

I noticed no one addressed the issue of starting explorer.exe as the shell, rather than it just opening an explorer window. Took me a while to figure this out, turns out it was something simple:

string explorer = string.Format("{0}\\{1}", Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("WINDIR"), "explorer.exe");        Process process = new Process();        process.StartInfo.FileName = explorer;        process.StartInfo.UseShellExecute = true;        process.Start();

You have to set the StartInfo.UseshellExecute as true to get it to restart as the shell.

A fool-proof solution:

foreach (Process p in Process.GetProcesses()){    // In case we get Access Denied    try    {        if (p.MainModule.FileName.ToLower().EndsWith(":\\windows\\explorer.exe"))        {            p.Kill();            break;        }    }    catch    { }}Process.Start("explorer.exe");