We all know about the explorer.exe process. This is one of the basic processes of the operating system, and it is in charge of controlling the explorer, the desktop and all its visual elements. Too many elements depend, for better or for worse, on this process, and that makes it one of the ones that end up failing the most in the long run and crashes quite often. Fortunately, after decades depending on this process, Microsoft is preparing one of the most important changes in its system. A change that will come with Windows 10X and Windows 10 21H2.
It is clear that Sun Valley , Windows 10 21H2, wants to mark a before and after in the operating system. Microsoft is working on very interesting changes, such as the new icons or the rounded corners of the interface, which will modernize the system. But we will also find many other changes up our sleeve. For example, one of the most interesting that we are going to be able to see, which we have just learned about right now, is that, finally, the taskbar will no longer be part of explorer.exe, but will instead have its own independent library : taskbar. dll.
Taskbar.dll: a first step towards a modular Windows
Until now, the taskbar was inside explorer.exe . This, although in its day it would surely be done for convenience, in reality it brings many problems. One of them is that, for example, if the explorer crashes when opening a folder or copying files from one directory to another, the taskbar will also crash.
Just yesterday the new build 21343 arrived to Windows 10 Insider Dev users . And although people have stayed with the new icons that this new version released, in reality a lot of changes are hidden under the hood of the system. For example, the new library “taskbar.dll” within System32 .
At the moment, the new build still uses explorer.exe to load and control the taskbar. The new taskbar.dll library still has quite serious bugs, such as the search bar not working, which prevent this new process from being enabled by default. Despite this, the new library is functional, and we will surely be able to see it in action very soon.
The taskbar is independent of the browser, just like the start menu
Right now, the taskbar pull-down menus, and the Start menu, have their own separate explorer.exe processes. And, shortly, the entire taskbar will be independent of the browser process. Also, thanks to this change, we may see new aesthetic changes to the system, as the new taskbar process may be based on WinUI 3 .
This change, yes, will make Windows consume a little more RAM , but instead we will have a much more fluid, fast and stable experience. It is certainly worth the price to pay.
We remember that Windows 10 21H2 will reach users in the fall. But before installing this version we will have to go through 21H1, the first update of 2021, which will arrive as a minor update in a few weeks.