Question

A bit of an odd request I gather, but for reasons too deep to go into detail here I need to replace my explorer.exe in the C:\Windows directory.

I have tried doing it myself, through the GUI and command prompt (ran as administrator) but I get access denied. It seems that being an admin on your machine is not the highest permission level after all, and only Trusted Installer can modify the file.

Does anybody know a way that works? I was about to boot into safe mode and try it but wanted to get some feedback before I do anything in-depth.

Thanks.

Answer 1

One can always boot a small Linux LiveCD, such as Puppy Linux, mount their NTFS partition, and replace your explorer.exe that way. I don't know if that will trigger a warning or not when you boot back into Windows, though.

It's a brute force way, in any case.

Answer 2

boot from a Windows Live CD (e.g. BartPE) and replace explorer.exe

(you may have to integrate current controller drivers, how to do this is explained on the website)

if you don't have an optical drive, you can easily create a bootable pen drive from your BartPE disc with WinToFlash

Answer 3

Boot a machine from bootable CD of USB drive and replace whatever you want in the system in question. Make sure to back up stuff you're replacing.

Answer 4

You need to take ownership of the file (as by default its owned by a system user - which is the root admin), once you have done this open a command prompt as an an administrator and then use task manager to kill explorer.exe

Then, and only then, you can replace explorer.exe without problem.

Answer 5

None of this bootable CD creation stuff is necessary (although undoubtedly fun). Just use the MoveFile Sysinternals tool. Backup first!