Restarting explorer.exe speeds up Windows

Whenever Windows itself starts to feel slow (context menu, windows explorer, in general windows type actions lagging), I open up task manager and restart explorer.exe. I only have to do this probably about 2 - 3 time a week, if that but it's enough to remember this little trick. I've only been doing this for about around two years. I've had two different computers in this time. Both running 10. I upgraded to 11. But regardless of having two different computers, my old one I reinstalled Windows at least a couple times throughout that time, and Windows 10 and 11, this isn't just my installation it seems. As per Google also shows other people with this odd problem, but not an actual reason to why this happens. Any reason why?

Sometimes when closing programs they may leave parts in memory or cache, rebooting or restarting File Explorer tend to clear things up. I see it once in awhile with the browsers freezing.

Berton said:

Sometimes when closing programs they may leave parts in memory or cache, rebooting or restarting File Explorer tend to clear things up. I see it once in awhile with the browsers freezing.

Click to expand...

As in Edge or all browsers? From my experience, it's only happened within stuff related directly to Windows/Explorer.exe. I can be in VS Code or playing a video game perfectly fine. Though if I alt-tab, the alt-tab might seem slower than usual/previous times and after that, doing something like right clicking will lag or opening a Window will lag. Though the program itself usually doesn't lag, more or less just the opening the window back up.

Both Firefox and Edge browsers on Win11, Edge will pop up a screen about needing to refresh and Firefox will freeze with an artifact [the small textbox seen when hovering over something], restarting File Explorer corrects the situation without having to reboot. Happens once in awhile on Win10.

Berton said:

Both Firefox and Edge browsers on Win11, Edge will pop up a screen about needing to refresh and Firefox will freeze with an artifact [the small textbox seen when hovering over something], restarting File Explorer corrects the situation without having to reboot. Happens once in awhile on Win10.

Click to expand...

Not to vouch for Chrome but I honestly haven't experienced that.

I made a shortcut for it and pinned it to my start menu.

Target:

I have a feeling this is probably very user specific as I have had Windows 10 and Windows 11 both from first release dates on an 8 year old laptop and now a newer (3 year old) desktop PC and have never noticed these oddities.
My machines are on 24/7 except for update restarts or local power outages (rare, but happens being in a village).
I use a lot of different software over the course of each day from Visual Studio, Blender, Graphics apps, Libre Office, Edge, Netflix and games (often alt-tabbing to reply to emails, check a web guide etc).
My usage also includes plugging/ unplugging other devices such as Bluetooth adapters, USB disks, graphic tablets and printing, so quite a wide range of input/ output and system load going on there daily.
What I'm saying I suppose is that I don't think the slow down/ delay behaviour is necessarily inherent to Windows, IMHO. It would be interesting to find out what causes/ contributes to the issue though.
Computers are like cats, predictable except when they are not.

Clearing out your memory helps too, I use RAMMap. I empty the Standby list.

The latest beta/dev build includes the following fix which may be correcting the issue -

• We fixed an issue where performance and reliability of explorer.exe could degrade over time, eventually resulting in a bugcheck, in the recent Insider Preview builds.

Could this be related to dwm.exe? How is dwm.exe doing when your PC becomes sluggish?

DigitalGoat said:

I have a feeling this is probably very user specific as I have had Windows 10 and Windows 11 both from first release dates on an 8 year old laptop and now a newer (3 year old) desktop PC and have never noticed these oddities.
My machines are on 24/7 except for update restarts or local power outages (rare, but happens being in a village).
I use a lot of different software over the course of each day from Visual Studio, Blender, Graphics apps, Libre Office, Edge, Netflix and games (often alt-tabbing to reply to emails, check a web guide etc).
My usage also includes plugging/ unplugging other devices such as Bluetooth adapters, USB disks, graphic tablets and printing, so quite a wide range of input/ output and system load going on there daily.
What I'm saying I suppose is that I don't think the slow down/ delay behaviour is necessarily inherent to Windows, IMHO. It would be interesting to find out what causes/ contributes to the issue though.
Computers are like cats, predictable except when they are not.

Click to expand...

I thought the same but that's why I've waited so long to even report on this as I was more or less testing to see if it was my installation or my hardware. But considering this has happened on multiple different installations of Windows and on at least two different computers, this is definitely Microsoft problem. Again, that's why I also Googled this problem before posting this and also getting Google results with people experiencing the same thing.

I get it our two different experiences could be different from one or another, but considering people have posted about this prior to this. The specific term I googled was "restarting explorer speeds up windows" and what's even more on the nose is all these posts originate from around 2020 to current. It may be something rare, but I'm 99% sure this is Windows fault.

EDIT: I forgot to mention, the reply @RFS made just solidifies my opinion even more.

I'm in no way saying this is a rare or isolated issue, just that it isn't necessarily a Windows/ Explorer inherent problem, if it was then it should affect everyone at some point since Windows and Explorer are the common denominators here, but I have honestly never experienced it.
I am just going out on a limb to suggest it may well be the result of a driver, service or support file installed or updated on some systems but not all, for whatever reason, and it may well be a 50/50 split across existing devices, we can only go by experiences of the issue people have noticed and bothered reporting somewhere.
Maybe there is a perfect storm situation for the issue to manifest, still interested to find out why it happens.

DigitalGoat said:

I'm in no way saying this is a rare or isolated issue, just that it isn't necessarily a Windows/ Explorer inherent problem, if it was then it should affect everyone at some point since Windows and Explorer are the common denominators here, but I have honestly never experienced it.
I am just going out on a limb to suggest it may well be the result of a driver, service or support file installed or updated on some systems but not all, for whatever reason, and it may well be a 50/50 split across existing devices, we can only go by experiences of the issue people have noticed and bothered reporting somewhere.
Maybe there is a perfect storm situation for the issue to manifest, still interested to find out why it happens.

Click to expand...

I'm also interested in why it happens, but I also don't see this being a perfect storm. I'm not trying to sound combative, but it sounds like you're going for the "We do things very similar, but it sounds like a 'you doing something wrong' problem"

I don't see where you get the idea I am saying "We do things very similar, but it sounds like a 'you doing something wrong' problem".
I am saying that I personally have never experienced the same thing, and in fact have never heard of it until this thread started. My response is simply another side of the coin, no finger pointing or blame distribution intended.

The fact remains that I use the same OS, doing similar things (at least from what I gathered from your OP description) but have never noticed the slow down as you have, so in my mind it doesn't seem to be a Windows/ Explorer inherent problem or wouldn't I have encountered it?

The fact there are other responders posting similar experiences to yours shows that the problem is not isolated, but also does not show conclusively that it is Explorer that is responsible, the sample size is too small versus the number of Windows (and this forums) users overall, one poster mentions browsers freezing, two posters list methods to restart explorer, one asks about Dwm.exe as a possible cause.

It also does not prove conclusively that it is not an Explorer problem just because I have not experienced it.
There must, at least looking at the issue logically, be a common factor that can be identified as the cause, but it doesn't seem to me to be Explorer on it's own.
Also RFS's post about explorer performance and reliability degrading over time seems to relate to insider builds, which I am not using and your post doesn't explicitly state you are using as opposed to release builds, maybe that is where the issue lies.

But as you seem to find other peoples experiences to be personally blaming you for the issue you are experiencing I shall withdraw from this thread, I hope you find the cause eventually and can mitigate it.

I can say this - I'm in nearly the same boat as DigitalGoat, in that I don't really see it degrading - but, I also 8 times the amount of RAM as the OP, so that could very well play in, and though I do leave my system running overnight most of the time, I do often (probably 2-3 times a week) reboot the machine, so maybe I simply haven't given mine time enough to degrade to the point of it affecting me, or being noticeable.

Even DigitalGoat has 2.5 times the RAM capacity as the OP, so the specs in and of themselves, could be a major factor here.