Restart PC via remote desktop with Explorer.exe dead

Question

I have a very unusual situation in which I am remote desktoping to my Windows 7 PC from my laptop. The Explorer.exe process has been killed so therefore the Start menu etc isn't available. So there fore there is very little I can do with my PC. So I need to restart my PC. How can I restart my PC after the Explorer.exe process has been killed?

Solution 1

You could go into Task Manager within the remote desktop session by pressing CTRL+SHIFT+ESC.

1. Click File
2. Click New Task (Run...)
3. Type explorer.exe and click OK

That will instantly restart the Explorer shell without the need to restart your PC.

Solution 2

If you can send a ctrl-alt-del to the remote computer, then you should be able to launch the task manager. From there you can click File->New Task. Launch the command prompt (cmd.exe).

From there, you can restart the computer with a 1 second delay with the following command:

shutdown /r /t 1

Comments

[firedfly]

Will CTRL+SHIFT+ESC work when explorer.exe is not running?

[Kez]

Definitely, yes. You can test this by manually killing the explorer.exe process from Task Manager itself. Close Task Manager... CTRL+SHIFT+ESC... voila.

[Matthieu Cartier]

@Shark - You've kind of missed the point...

[Shekhar]

@neurolysis- yup i guess i did :)