kaled - 1:46 pm on Sep 7, 2010 (gmt 0)

Explorer.exe provides the desktop and taskbar amongst other things. If the problem reoccurs, it is most likely caused by a shell extension - typically this means a utility that adds some sort of dynamic functionality to context menus.

That said, forcibly closing Explorer could affect many things so it might not actually be the cause of the problem.

Kaled.