Quote Originally Posted by kasracer
Well, you can make your own Taskbar and just had it show the running programs. Then use the Win32 API to get all the open windows and make sure they're not over your task bar (and resize them if they are).
Lol, that would horrible to keep checking for that. There is a way using win32 api to tell win32k.sys what size your tool bar is so that it knows how big to make the windows when they are max. That is one of the many reasons I want to see a basic example so i can get a feel for these API.

Quote Originally Posted by kasracer
You can't just "close" explorer. The only way to make it stop running is to end its process or change the path of the shell in the registry and restart the system.
Now, you should check your facts first. click start -> shutdown, then hold down shift, ctrl, and alt and hit cancel. and there you go, explorer closed down itself and cleared any settings it had told win32k, along with many other things that dont happen when you just kill it.