Why does explorer.exe automatically restart when I user process.Kill() C#?

Question

I wrote this little function that searches for a process by name and kills it: see code below

Process[] procList = Process.GetProcesses();
RegistryKey expKey = Registry.LocalMachine;
expKey = expKey.OpenSubKey(@"SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon", true);
expKey.SetValue("AutoRestartShell", 0);

        using (StreamWriter writer = new StreamWriter(@"C:\test\progtemp\Procs1.Txt", true))

        {

            int i = 0;

            foreach (Process procs in procList)

            {

                writer.WriteLine(string.Format("Process Name {0} -- Process ID {1} -- Session ID {2}", procs.ProcessName, procs.Id, procs.SessionId));

                if (procs.ProcessName == "explorer")

                {

                    procList[i].Kill();

                }

                i++;

            }

        }
expKey.SetValue("AutoRestartShell", 1);

I'm curious why when I tell it to kill explorer it automatically restarts. How can I make it so that it does not restart and you have to go into task manager and manually restart it?

Explorer.exe is what's used to provide the Windows shell. Microsoft made a decision that if it crashed it made sense to attempt to restart it. — Jeff Prince, Aug 22 '15 at 17:48

score 6 · Answer 1 · edited Mar 20 '17 at 10:18

6

If you run regedit and go into HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon, you can find there a key named AutoRestartShell.

Settings that to 0 would disallow explorer.exe from rebooting. Although I personally say it's not the best idea to mess with Registry just for that but if you really need to, make use of Registry.SetValue to change that value to 0 from the code (documentation: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/5a5t63w8(v=vs.110).aspx)

Edit: inspiration taken from https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc939703.aspx

Edit 2: digging a bit into google came up with the following result which explains everything slightly better: https://superuser.com/questions/511914/why-does-explorer-restart-automatically-when-i-kill-it-with-process-kill

edited Mar 20 '17 at 10:18

Community

1
1

answered Aug 22 '15 at 16:51

Propolys

364
1
16

After Implementing the code above and running the App as Admin and setting the subkey write to true it still throws me an exception. Any ideas? – user3038431 Aug 22 '15 at 18:18
What's the exception? – Propolys Aug 22 '15 at 18:59
The exact same security exception I was getting before telling me I don't have privileges to edit the registry – user3038431 Aug 22 '15 at 19:05

Why does explorer.exe automatically restart when I user process.Kill() C#?

1 Answers1