Indiscriminate Transgressions

It turns out that there’s an official way to restart Windows Explorer. As a developer I have wanted to know how to do this for what seems like 1,000 years, but never bothered to figure it out as you can kill the task from task manager AND re-run a new explorer.exe from the same place.

To shut down officially, hit Start->Shutdown (or Turn Off Computer on Windows XP), then while holding the control shift and alt keys, click cancel on the shutdown dialog. To start a new instance of Windows Explorer, bring up Task Manager by holding the control and shift keys, then hit escape (handy bit of info!). In Task Manager, choose File->New Task and enter “Explorer.exe”. This will have restarted Windows Explorer properly.

So now I know how to restart Explorer on Windows XP. However, I switched to Vista last year. When you go to Start->Shutdown on Vista, the computer instantly shuts down, giving you no opportunity to do any of the fancy keywork. Any ideas?

I recently got back in touch with a guy I know, and he showed me this cool project he worked on. Here’s sample output from his application that used my face:

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Looks great! This is the file I uploaded (not even a good snapshot):