If you suddenly get your Start button and taskbar back, that means explorer.exe has not been removed.

In the resulting dialog box, type in explorer.exe and press OK. Click on the File menu and then on the Run option (or the Run new task button in more recent versions of Windows). Type Ctrl+Alt+Delete and select Task Manager. You can then also pin it to your taskbar (right-click on the taskbar icon and click on Pin to taskbar).īut if you don’t have a taskbar and a Start menu? Then maybe explorer.exe is gone. If you create a shortcut that runs that, you’ll have Windows Explorer back. What I would have you do is to create a new shortcut to explorer.exe - that’s the file name for Windows Explorer. I can see that happening, although not necessarily as part of the malicious software removal tool. Perhaps what’s happened is that the shortcut to Windows Explorer has been removed. If you can Start, it’s not gone If your Start menu and taskbar are still visible, Windows Explorer has not been removed.īesides being used to look at your files on the computer, Windows Explorer is also the program that displays the Start menu and the taskbar. If explorer.exe really isn’t present, then the System File Checker or a System Repair might be called for. Running “explorer.exe” via Task Manager is a quick way to run Windows Explorer and possibly re-create shortcuts to the program. Shortcuts to the program might disappear or the program might not be running, but it should still be there. It’s exceptionally rare that Windows File Explorer - explorer.exe - would be removed for any reason.

Windows explorer task manager