Restart Windows without reboot
Restart Without Reboot windows all Writing from Romania, reader Mihai Constantinescu asked: Hi Fred. Using WinBoost 2000 (a program for tweaking Win98) I found an option to restart Win98 without rebooting the system (Windows is closed and than it says on a black screen "Windows is restarting" and it takes less time than a full system reboot). WinBoost 2000 can make a shortcut, which in fact has the following command "C:\Windows\Rundll.exe user.exe,exitwindowsexec". My question is is there a similar option for Windows XP? (the same command doesn't work in XP) Regards, Mihai Constantinescu (from Romania) The answer is yes, and no. 8-) Win98 is a two-part system: Part of the OS comprises a graphical environment that's on top of low-level software that traces its roots back to old-style DOS. This two-part nature explains why Win98 can sometimes lock up to the point where, even though it's still running, it won't accept any input The lower-level system is still there and alive, but the "upper" portion (which includes the graphical interface and the functions for handling user input) may be hung so that you can't do anything! On the plus side, the two-part nature means you can stop and restart just the "upper" portions of Windows 98 without affecting the lower ones, if you want to. This kind of lightweight reboot is less thorough but much faster than a full-blown restart (i.e. when everything shuts all the way down). You can force a fast, partial reboot with no extra software at all--- the function is built right into Win98: Click Start/Shutdown, and select Restart. Then press and hold the left shift key when you click OK. Keep pressing the left shift key until the words "Windows is now restarting..." appear on the screen. WinXP (and 2000 and NT) do things differently: Crashes are fewer in the first place, and almost always not as severe--- an app may crash, but almost never takes down the OS with it, for example. Plus, tasks are much more carefully controlled so they're less likely to step on each other's toes. Software trouble usually is confined to the actual program that's having difficulty, and doesn't spill over to affect other programs (or the system itself). Thus, a crashed application isn't very likely to (say) cause the user-interface portions of XP to hang. Conversely, restarting just the UI probably won't have much effect on any app that's having trouble. But if you want to refresh (via stop/start) just XP's graphical interface, it's easy to do so: Close all apps; save all your work. Hit Ctrl-Alt-Del to bring up the Task Manager. Click on the Processes tab. Find "Explorer." Highlight it, and click "End Process." You'll get a warning message, but if you're sure you've closed all other apps and saved all your data (i.e. that your system is essentially idle, with nothing important going on), you should be OK. Click Yes to shut down Explorer, and your desktop will temporarily vanish. Now, still in Task Manager, select File/New and enter "Explorer" (minus the quotes) in the dialog box. Your desktop will then restart. Close Task Manager, and you're done. Again, because of the way XP is built, there's usually not much reason to do this. With XP (or Win2k), you won't need to reboot as often as with Win98; and on those infrequent times when you do need to reboot, you probably should reboot all the way, instead of just refreshing the interface.
