Skip to content

Restore Explorer shell if setup leaves it stopped - #2552

Merged
ge0rdi merged 1 commit into
Open-Shell:masterfrom
YellowNest:fix/installer-restore-explorer-shell
Oct 5, 2026
Merged

ge0rdi merged 1 commit into
Open-Shell:masterfrom
YellowNest:fix/installer-restore-explorer-shell

Conversation

@YellowNest

Copy link
Copy Markdown

Summary

Restore the Windows Explorer desktop shell when setup completes successfully but Restart Manager leaves it stopped.

The bootstrapper now records whether the current interactive session is actually using explorer.exe as its desktop shell before launching msiexec. After a successful MSI transaction it gives Restart Manager a short grace period to restore Explorer normally. If the shell is still missing, setup launches %WINDIR%\explorer.exe once as a fallback.

The recovery is intentionally conservative:

  • it only runs if Explorer was the desktop shell before setup
  • it verifies the shell belongs to the same session
  • it does nothing for alternative shells or non-interactive deployment sessions
  • it does nothing after failed or reboot-required MSI outcomes
  • it does not loop if Explorer itself is crashing

This keeps Restart Manager as the primary recovery mechanism and only repairs the failure case described in #2070.

Verification

A full fork PR build completed successfully for exact commit 2c79a8a558a3e2748d69aff0d02a3add5305b468, including:

  • Build binaries
  • Build installers
  • Build setup and symbols

Build:
https://github.com/YellowNest/Open-Shell-Menu/actions/runs/37226898693

Fixes #2070

YellowNest added a commit to YellowNest/Open-Shell-Menu that referenced this pull request Oct 4, 2026
Bundle current master with pending PRs Open-Shell#2547, Open-Shell#2548, Open-Shell#2551, Open-Shell#2552, and Open-Shell#2553 for local integration testing. This branch is test packaging only and is not intended for upstream merge.
@ge0rdi
ge0rdi merged commit 88e8cd8 into Open-Shell:master Oct 5, 2026
2 checks passed
@ale5000-git

ale5000-git commented Oct 5, 2026 •

Copy link
Copy Markdown

@YellowNest
@ge0rdi
This thing happened to me in the past on Windows 10.

The situation was that there was an explorer.exe open (seen in task manager) but no desktop and no application bar.
Opening explorer.exe again just opened a folder.
Instead the correct solution was to terminate the existent explorer.exe and then open it again.

Is there a way to detect a missing application bar with explorer.exe opened?

Sign up for free to join this conversation on GitHub. Already have an account? Sign in to comment

Labels

None yet

Projects

None yet

Development

Successfully merging this pull request may close these issues.

Stop leaving users dead in the water when installer terminates Windows shell

3 participants