In Windows 7, you get the same option by holding CTRL+SHIFT and right-clicking the Start menu. The last entry in the context menu is Exit Explorer. The easiest way to shut down File Explorer is to press CTRL+SHIFT and then right-click the Windows taskbar. Several ways exist to restart File Explorer. Just closing File Explorer wouldn’t necessarily do the trick because the File Explorer process will continue to run. One option could be to just restart File Explorer. Perhaps you opened multiple applications or web pages, and signing out would mean a lot of click-click to restore your current session.

However, this prompt usually comes at the wrong time. For this reason, signing out and signing in again ensures that shell-related changes take effect. The userinit process that launches after a user signs in initializes the user environment and then starts the default shell. Sometimes you will see a dialog window that suggests signing out of your computer to apply these changes.

Thus, often when you change Windows UI settings, such as forcing notification icons to always show or configuring the pinned programs on the taskbar, Explorer has to be restarted so that the changes take effect. That Explorer is the default shell in Windows essentially means that you use its GUI to start applications.

Restarting windows explorer