There is no real detriment, but not restarting explorer can have a small
negative effect on your performance. The browser caches files that you have
viewed, consuming memory. If you fail to restart the browser after extensive
data handling, you might slow the system down, over time. The Vista 'client'
is designed to handle data quickly, with indexing. If you never restart your
machine, I would suggest you restart the Explorer.exe task in Task Manager
occasionally. A Desktop computer is just not a 24/7 system, like a server.
To restart Explorer, rightclick the taskbar, and Task Manager, end the
explorer process, and use the 'new task' button to type in 'explorer.exe'.
An average user should probably do that once a month, at some point when not
much is in use in their system.
On the other hand, if you only open a few folders, over and over, even that
would not be needed. On my system, the regular updates I allow will restart
my system enough to make it a moot point.
--
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Mark L. Ferguson MS-MVP
https://mvp.support.microsoft.com/profile/Mark.Ferguson