I was wondering if anyone could suggest a simple method where i could toggle the explorer.exe service. How could i go about writing a script to start and stop explorer.exe, and what would be the simplest and least memory-intensive way to set up a hotkey that would allow me to do this, so that i can quickly disable explorer when i don't need it.
Thanks.
Note that you cannot use the Windows default hotkey system (going to the Properties of a Shortcut and entering in a "Shortcut key" value) because that requires explorer.exe to work. Just a little point.
This isn't a whole answer, but you can use pskill and a .bat file to shut down explorer (basically it uses the same quitting process that Task Manager does, so it may not be the safest method). That doesn't help you toggle it though...
http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/PsKill.html (Note that you have to download this tool)
pskill explorer.exe
Sorry I can't help more!
-NC
Sorry I can't help more!
No you've been quite helpful. On the site you linked to there was another little tool which lets you suspend and resume a process, which is just what i'm looking for, so thanks. 
I was thinking of making an app, well I'm in the process (incredible pun, as you'll see 
), of building an app that will kill pre-selected processes for use before one starts a game. When the game (or any other memory heavy full screen application of which one doesn't need all their nice memory-reserving skins) exits, it'll reload them all. I'll let you know how it goes.
That would be perfect, as that is just the reason i'm asking how to do this. I'm not a gamer, but when i'm on the move and want to use Photoshop or 3D software on my not-too-quick laptop, it's good to have all the memory i can get.
Not sure if its been tried before, but it seems like a perfect & good idea to me (with a chat comp. I need it if I wana play games or anything); so the idea'll probably get snaked, if it does it'll definetly be better than if I coded it.
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