Have you ever wondered how to restart the Start Menu? The more tech-savvy among you probably know that you can just pop open Task Manager and kill the explorer.exe process, but there's actually another way to do it built right into Windows 7 and Vista—it's just a bit of a secret.
Hold down the Ctrl and Shift keys, then open up the start menu, and right-click anywhere on the blank space. You'll see a new menu with an Exit Explorer item on it, which will immediately terminate the desktop shell—keep in mind to reopen it you'll need to use Ctrl+Shift+Esc to open Task Manager, and then File –> Run and type in explorer.exe.
That's not the only right-click menu trick you can do here, however—if you want to open up the Start Menu folder in Windows 7, you can right-click on the All Programs menu item to access the old Start Menu context menu from previous versions of Windows.
