crash - How to reboot a machine on Remote desktop connection after explorer.exe crashes?
2014-07
How do I reboot a machine on a Remote Desktop connection after explorer.exe crashes?
I'm stuck at trying to do this. After I googled a bit and found that people were saying to use Ctrl + Alt + Esc or Ctrl + Alt + Del to turn on the Task Manager. Both didn't work. So now all I have is a blank desktop and no key combination can work at all.
How do I either show Task Manager so I can start a new instance of explorer.exe or how do I restart the machine via keyboard shortcuts?
if you are using Windows Remote Desktop Connection,
- Before you hit connect, click the options drop-down,
- Go to the Programs tab,
- Check the box that says "Start the Following program on Connection"
- Enter 'explorer' (without quotes) into the Program Path and File Name Box
- Connect Normally
I've had a similar issue with one of our work VM instances and it's a pain to have to get I.T. to reboot it all the time, and I couldn't seem to open Task Manager when the instance was in this state.
What you need to use is Ctrl+Alt+End and that will let you get to the task manager. Then, click on File
-> New Task (Run...)
and type in explorer.exe
and press Ok. Explorer will start back up and you should be able to continue working as before. If you really want to reboot at this point (though it usually isn't necessary), you can do so by clicking Start
and typing command prompt
and pressing Enter, to get the command prompt window open. Then type in shutdown /r
and press Enter and that will reboot your computer after a short time delay.
Depending on what software do you use to remote into the machine (Windows Remote Terminal, VNC, etc.) these applications provide the option of signaling the remote machine to reboot. Search your client's menus.
I have a Windows Xp SP3 box (doing the duty of a server) that is having uptime problems due to either power outages in the office, or some unexplained crashing. How can I find out the last time Windows booted up or crashed? The crashes only seem to occur every week or so.
I've tried going through the Event Viewer, but I can't seem to find anything that yells out Hey! I just rebooted!
Look for System events -
Source = EventLog
ID = 6009 or 6005
This will show you when your box last started.
You should also look in the c:\Windows\MiniDump directory for any crash dumps.