# Restart explorer.exe failed, RPC thing failed to run



## billybong001 (Feb 14, 2009)

I'm running a program which becomes highly unstable when I ALT-TAB out of it unless explorer.exe is shutdown. This worked well until yesterday, I would just restart explorer.exe and resume normal usage.

After restarting explorer.exe and when I try to open any folder I get this error:

"The Remote Procedure Call failed and did not execute."

RPC is Started and Automatic in services.msc. RPC Locator is not started and on Manual.

Please do not tell me to restart. The computer carries out file server tasks using Wampserver and it thus inherent that shutting down is to be avoided. Moreover, this issue did not occur before so it is a problem with Windows, not a built-in limitation of any sort.


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## jenae (Jun 17, 2008)

Hi, well the obvious question is what is this program that is so unstable? Have you thought of running a batch file to close explorer.exe .Something like :- taskkill /im explorer.exe /f saved and run as a .bat file will stop parent and child objects . You could add the errant program to the taskkill bat file and adding explorer.exe at the end will have the program closed and explorer.exe opened.

The bad news is the RpcSs service cannot be stopped and restarted by the net stop command, IT has to be by a restart.. see recovery under the service properties, You can ignore the RpcSs locator service it is by default manual.


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## billybong001 (Feb 14, 2009)

It's not literally unstable, just that ALT-TABbing out of it sometimes means I can't get back in, regardless of "bring to front", "switch to" or well, more ALT-TABbing.

The batch file method sounds interesting. However I do not know how to go about writing such complex commands (use it mainly for copy/disk utils etc). Can you teach me?


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## jenae (Jun 17, 2008)

Hi, open a cmd prompt (as admin) and type taskkill/? You will see a whole list of options. To make things easier this is a batch file to close explorer, close notepad.exe (could be any .exe, including your program), and reopen explorer.

Write this in any text editor (notepad) then when finished select "file" then "save as" call it whatever you like say Program.bat (must have the .bat) and save to desktop. Locate the saved file and right click select "run as administrator" the batch file will run.


```
taskkill /im explorer.exe /f 
taskkill /im notepad.exe
explorer.exe
```


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## billybong001 (Feb 14, 2009)

Hi,

That worked really well, thanks alot. :smile:

Cheerio,
Bill.


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