THIS IS NOT WORKING FOR ME-SORRY FOR POSTING THIS. I think this was possible in Windows 98, in fact I'm sure it worked in Win 98. Can anyone else confirm? I should've check this earlier.

A somewhat not-as-good alternative is to kill the explorer.exe process and then relaunch it with task manager, but it's not as clean and you still have some other DLLs and processes running that could be cleared up with a reboot. This will sometimes help if Windows gets frozen and you want to try something before hitting the reset or shutting down. Here's a link that explains how to kill the windows explorer shell: http://www.watchingthenet.com/how-to-restart-windows-explorer-shell-without-rebooting-windows.html

I went to the source site to complain about them giving bad information, but the site is down (not surprised).

Does that effect the computer in any way? Thanks for the tip.

Wow, I forgot all about this, thx for the reminder!

FYI, it does not affect your computer in a bad way. The only difference between this and a regular restart is that this way does not re-initialize the hardware. Though rare, it is possible that something is hung up in your video card or other devices that will require a complete restart at times.

I don't see "Shut Down.." under Start. Just "Turn Off Computer".....is that the same? (XP)

Dorine, yes the 'turn of your computer' is under the start menu, then once you select that, you choose either to restart or shutdown.

I have tweakVI and it comes with an icon to shutdown, restart and hibernate windows. Ever since the latest Vista update windows has been taking longer to start. Thanks for the reminder. Next time I do a restart I will see if this method affects the restart time. That will tell me if it is a windows thing or a BIOS thing, right?

I think this is a 'warm' boot vs. 'cold' boot, so the initial BIOS check is bypassed. Most likely, it's a windows thing for you unless you've upgraded your BIOS lately.

No just the auto update from microsoft

I feel bad about posting this now because it's totally not working for me on XP - I know this used to work on Windows 98.

I liked windows 98

I think I'm also wrong about the 'cold' boot vs. 'warm' boot. A restart of windows is not considered a boot at all, I think. A cold boot would be powering up your computer when the power is shut off completely. A warm boot is like hitting the reset button while the machine is still turned on.

Alanco I think it is a Great Conversation, Just hearing you all talk about it is giving me ideas..Just this week I have started trying to end processes (something I know nothing about,but can't stop tinkering..) I like the add-on's but they don't like me..I have turned off a few processes this week and I'm still here to talk about it..( I hope-Knock on wood, Oh good my desk is wood,Knock,Knock..) Anyway It gave me a little confidence to know that I was close, when I had NO idea what to do..Everything is guessing with me until I know for sure.. I thank you for the topic - the clip - keep 'em coming.. I am going to try the shift key too- What could it hurt, Right.. Thanks for all the input..

Yes, it definitely did work with win98. I have not tried it on xp or vista yet either. I wouldn't be surprised if ms removed the functionality since WinXP's core is much different than Win98. Win98 ran on top of it's own version of DOS so when you would do a shift reboot it would restart windows but not DOS and therefore it could tell DOS to simply reload windows. With WinXP there is no DOS which means windows would have to do a complete reboot of the computer in order for windows to completely unload. That's not to say they didn't come up with a way around it, but that's my guess on it.