Q: What is explorer.exe?
A: Most succinctly Explorer is the shell.  When you start Windows and it is just sitting there at the desktop with the Start menu everything you see, at the highest level, is Explorer.  A lot of the code for shell stuff lives in shell32.dll, but explorer.exe contains some code for things like the Start menu and the tray.

Q: What is the difference between iexplore.exe and explorer.exe?
A: The explorer frame is capable of browsing the file system (My Computer, c:\, etc) as well as the Internet.  iexplore.exe starts Internet Explorer, which is the explorer frame browsing the Internet, with all the correct buttons and other UI elements.  explore.exe starts the shell the first time it is run.  If you run explorer.exe again, by doing something like Start->Run->explorer.exe->OK, it launches a file system view with all the corresponding buttons and widgets. 

Q: How do I start Internet Explorer from a command line?
A: Well, you can call iexplore.exe (it usually lives in “%programfiles%\internet explorer\”) and pass an URL as the parameter, or you can just use the 'start' command:

     d:\> start http://www.microsoft.com
     d:\> “%programfiles%\internet explorer\iexplore.exe” http://www.microsoft.com

Q:How to cleanly start and stop explorer.exe

A: If you are running Windows XP and want a cmd prompt with no strange environment variables set, do the following: CTRL+SHIFT+ESC->File->CTRL+New Task (Run...)
This will open a cmd window with only the basics.  This is useful if you have killed Explorer and need to restart it.  Explorer will keep the environment of the cmd window that started it. 

If you want to cleanly shutdown Explorer without having it automatically restart: Start->Shutdown->CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+Cancel.

Send via e-mail | Submit to Digg | Add to Live Favorites