Why don't programs just kill and restart explorer.exe?

Question

I know of a lot of programs that once installed (or an update to the registry) they need something to refresh the values. This can be done by killing and restarting explorer.exe, however most of them do not do this and rather ask you to restart your computer. A process that takes a long time.

I'm currently writing a tool that will be used by technical people only, and it makes some changes to the registry that needs a reboot (or restart explorer.exe) to take effect. I don't have to worry about my users being freaked out by explorer.exe restarting on them so that's not an issue.

What else should I consider before doing this? Why do the other applications tell you to reboot instead of the faster, restart explorer? Is there a security reason? Or is it just habit?

Answer 1

Killing and restarting explorer is not going to do everything that a restart of the system will do:

1) Any currently running application will not get refreshed.

2) This can lead to stability problems on the system, as well. I've, in particular, noticed problems with my graphics driver not getting updated correctly after an explorer shutdown/restart.

3) It just kind of smells ;) Killing a process as part of an install just seems nasty.

Answer 2

I've seen problems with icons in the notification area not showing up after explorer has restarted (usually after it stops responding and I have to kill it).

Depending on the notification icon, this could cause the user problems.