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Restarting Windows Explorer couldn't be easier!
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ShellDispenser
Restarting Windows Explorer couldn't be easier!

Command line usage

When you want to close Explorer automatically under certain circumstances, you can call ShellDispenser with command line arguments.  ShellDispenser will then immediately perform the desired action and close afterwards.  This can come in handy in all sorts of situations.

  • When you are building a Windows Explorer namespace extension (NSE) you can restart Explorer as the first build step.  This way you can test and re-compile your extension as often as you want without logging off or restarting Windows between compilations.
  • When you deploy software that needs an Explorer restart to succeed, you can let ShellDispenser close Explorer first, then install the software and finally let ShellDispenser restart Explorer  This way the user doesn't need to restart Windows for the installation to complete.
  • When you know that Explorer crashes at e.g. 10:00 PM each day you can create a scheduled task to refresh Explorer at that time.

An overview of the command line options can be found on the "Command line reference" help page.