Cant delete or rename explorer.exe

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lee - Mar 24, 2010 at 04:30 PM
 A person - Mar 7, 2017 at 02:22 PM
Im trying to delete my iexplorer.exe & explorer.exe, or rename it, & it wont let me do either, stating error deleting key, cannot delete ieplorer.exe, error while deleting key, please help me sort this problem out

1 response

Ambucias Posts 47310 Registration date Monday February 1, 2010 Status Moderator Last seen February 15, 2023 11,166
Mar 24, 2010 at 04:45 PM
Hello,

I must admit, at first your issue surprised me, for I asked myself: "Why on earth would want to delete explorer.exe?". I guess that I will stay on my appetite.

I suggest that the reason you cannot delete or rename is because explorer.exe is in process, so you must first end it as a process. If you are using Windows XP, you do alt+ctrl+del to open the task manager, click on the processes tab, locate Explorer.exe and terminate it.

Then you can proceed doing whatever you wish with the file.

Regards
The reason you can't modify File Explorer is because it needs to be open to access the folder it's in. If you want a copy with a different name, copy it to another folder and rename it.
Why would you want to delete it? It's an important program.