Had a customer on Monday call complaining that
his start icon did not activate.

I go to assisted logged on and indeed all the
clicking in the world did nothing.

Okay, lets open the task manager, find
explorer.exe and restart it. No explorer.exe.
Huh. So started it fresh from task manager.
Still no explorer.exe.

Okay, be that way:
shutdown /r /f /t 00

and happy camping returned. I rebooted
again to make sure happy camping was still
in effect.

All the times I have seen explorer.exe dead,
the desktop was blank. <Ctrl><alt><del> to get
into task manager and start explorer.exe
brought the desktop back. Never seen the
desktop working without explorer.exe running.

Huh ...

On 6/30/2022 1:19 AM, T wrote:
> Had a customer on Monday call complaining that
> his start icon did not activate.
>
> I go to assisted logged on and indeed all the
> clicking in the world did nothing.
>
> Okay, lets open the task manager, find
> explorer.exe and restart it.  No explorer.exe.
> Huh.  So started it fresh from task manager.
> Still no explorer.exe.
>
> Okay, be that way:
>    shutdown /r /f /t 00
>
> and happy camping returned.  I rebooted
> again to make sure happy camping was still
> in effect.
>
> All the times I have seen explorer.exe dead,
> the desktop was blank.  <Ctrl><alt><del> to get
> into task manager and start explorer.exe
> brought the desktop back.  Never seen the
> desktop working without explorer.exe running.
>
> Huh ...

Maybe things don't work quite like they used to ?

Something makes that colored backdrop.

Explorer.exe is an ecosystem that runs on top
of that colored backdrop.

If the colored backdrop thingy was dead, the screen
would be jet black, a void, and lacking in form.
(I only think the picture here happens, if DWM was
running for a while and then DWM was killed. And this
article claims that DWM can no longer be killed. Can
you start more applications running with no DWM ? At
least the person taking the picture has a Task Manager,
with a Run box.)

https://windowsreport.com/windows-11-dwm-disabled/

I suspect that DWM is prone to stopping communicating
with other processes. If explorer.exe cannot get a
response, if explorer.exe is not allowed to join
the correct "session" (for malware prevention reasons),
then explorer.exe would have no choice but to die
and go away again.

It's not Xorg exactly, but it has some similar smells.

If Firefox and Chrome are throwing pixmaps at DWM
60 times a second, that's an excellent reliability
test. And sometimes, when the memory taken by the
browsers begin to balloon out of control, you have
to wonder what new hobby DWM has developed.

Underneath the covers, there is more going on than
used to be there. There's virtualization, a virtual GPU,
the connections for that must have some complexity
side effects.

Hey, Microsoft, a block diagram would be nice. <Crickets>

I see the same trend on Linux. If your product cannot
be debugged... that is _eventually_ going to have
consequences for your business opportunities.

Paul

On 6/30/22 04:37, Paul wrote:
> On 6/30/2022 1:19 AM, T wrote:
>> Had a customer on Monday call complaining that
>> his start icon did not activate.
>>
>> I go to assisted logged on and indeed all the
>> clicking in the world did nothing.
>>
>> Okay, lets open the task manager, find
>> explorer.exe and restart it.  No explorer.exe.
>> Huh.  So started it fresh from task manager.
>> Still no explorer.exe.
>>
>> Okay, be that way:
>>     shutdown /r /f /t 00
>>
>> and happy camping returned.  I rebooted
>> again to make sure happy camping was still
>> in effect.
>>
>> All the times I have seen explorer.exe dead,
>> the desktop was blank.  <Ctrl><alt><del> to get
>> into task manager and start explorer.exe
>> brought the desktop back.  Never seen the
>> desktop working without explorer.exe running.
>>
>> Huh ...
>
> Maybe things don't work quite like they used to ?
>
> Something makes that colored backdrop.
>
> Explorer.exe is an ecosystem that runs on top
> of that colored backdrop.
>
> If the colored backdrop thingy was dead, the screen
> would be jet black, a void, and lacking in form.
> (I only think the picture here happens, if DWM was
> running for a while and then DWM was killed. And this
> article claims that DWM can no longer be killed. Can
> you start more applications running with no DWM ? At
> least the person taking the picture has a Task Manager,
> with a Run box.)
>
>    https://windowsreport.com/windows-11-dwm-disabled/
>
> I suspect that DWM is prone to stopping communicating
> with other processes. If explorer.exe cannot get a
> response, if explorer.exe is not allowed to join
> the correct "session" (for malware prevention reasons),
> then explorer.exe would have no choice but to die
> and go away again.
>
> It's not Xorg exactly, but it has some similar smells.
>
> If Firefox and Chrome are throwing pixmaps at DWM
> 60 times a second, that's an excellent reliability
> test. And sometimes, when the memory taken by the
> browsers begin to balloon out of control, you have
> to wonder what new hobby DWM has developed.
>
> Underneath the covers, there is more going on than
> used to be there. There's virtualization, a virtual GPU,
> the connections for that must have some complexity
> side effects.
>
> Hey, Microsoft, a block diagram would be nice. <Crickets>
>
> I see the same trend on Linux. If your product cannot
> be debugged... that is _eventually_ going to have
> consequences for your business opportunities.
>
>    Paul
>
>

What was weird was all the icons on the desktop worked
(he opened a browser to start Go To Assist)