Re-starting "Windows" Without Re-booting Your Computer

Tech tip for Windows: Ever have Windows freeze up on you or become unresponsive?  I have, often.  Well most ppl don't know that what we call Windows is a lot of smaller programs working together.  When Windows freezes up or gets slow, the issue is with a component of Windows, not Windows.  That component is simply called Explorer.  This is NOT Internet Explorer.  You can see it running in Task Manager as "explorer.exe".  (One thing that can cause problems is when somehow more than one copy of Explorer starts running.)  Now how to get Explorer to get unstuck/responsive without restarting your computer?

Fire up a copy of the command window.  Choose Start, then Run, then type "cmd" (no quotes) and hit Enter.  Different vers. of Windows may do it differently but you get the idea.  Next bring up Task Manager with Ctrl-Alt-Delete.  Now sort all running Processes by name and find "explorer.exe" in the list.  There may be more than one.  Now for each "explorer.exe", select it and kill the task.  Your desktop will disappear at some point but kill all "explorer.exe" processes.  Now close the Task Manager.  Now in your open cmd window, type "explorer.exe" (no quotes) and hit Enter.  Suddenly your Windows desktop re-appears.  Now you can close the cmd window if you want or leave it open.

This will save you having to re-start your computer, esp. when you have unsaved documents open that you want to avoid losing by powering down your computer or soft-booting it.

Resurrecting Deleted Windows Files

Ever send a file or files to the Recycle Bin and then empty it only to suddenly realize you just deleted the wrong file(s)? Yep.

Can't speak for anything under Windows 10. But on Windows 10 with a typical installation (ie, it has a recovery partition usu. labeled as disk D), there is hope. Here's what you do:

1. Right-click in the folder you deleted the file from.
2. Click Properties
3. Click the Previous Versions tab.
4. Click on the most recent backup under Folder Versions
5. Click Restore.

IF your deleted file was shadow backed-up by Windows, it will be restored.

Don't let the date on the backup scare you. Near as I can tell, the most recent backup is the current backup being dynamically backed up in an ongoing way. The date and time of it seems to be when the backup was created, not ended. So it's possible for you to be able to recover files very recently created (then deleted).

I imagine this post will make me a few new BFFs. :)
UPDATE: Sometimes you don't have any previous versions. A good way to make sure you have them is to turn on automatic backups. Do so in your Settings. Google it, baby.