
If File Explorer isn’t running on your computer or crashes, all you’ll see is a black screen. Apart from file management, it also allows you to interact with the Start menu, desktop, and taskbar items.

Having said that, File Explorer starts running in the background as soon as your computer boots up. Related: The Best Windows File Explorer Alternatives and Replacements If you’re someone who switched from a Mac, consider this Microsoft’s equivalent of Finder in macOS. You can open a new File Explorer window by simply clicking on the folder icon next to Windows Search.

You use it to navigate through various directories and browse for files within the operating system. Here, we’ll be taking a look at four unique ways to restart File Explorer in Windows 10.įile Explorer is the built-in file manager for Windows devices. Very strange.By doing this, you’re basically hitting the reboot button for the graphical user interface without having to shut down or restart your PC. The moment I hit F5 refresh, the files appear. Nothing appears until I hit Refresh or F5. I will save a file from Notepad, nothing appears. I will right click > new folder, but nothing appears. I would copy ABC.jpg and paste it but nothing will appear. What's happening for me is, coincidentally when my explorer.exe has the high power usage issue, none of the files as mentioned above appear. Or if you go into Notepad and save something like readme.txt to your desktop, that readme.txt should appear immediately after you hit Save. Or, if you right click > create a new folder on desktop, it should prompt you "New Folder" and you type in a new name. What I meant by this is, let's say for example, you copy ABC.jpg and paste it in the same location, the file will appear immediately as "ABC - Copy.jpg".

"Now I'm fixing a similar issue again, this time with explorer.exe and files and folders not refreshing on their own. But that was unrelated and it did not fix the explorer.exe high power usage issue.

I did do SFC Scan Now a few days ago and it did detect something corrupt and it fixed it.
