I am trying to launch an exe, without using the ShellAPI to do it. I have tried in both Delphi and VB but have been unsuccessful. Basically we are trying to write a program which will load as the shell, then when complete hand over control of the shell to explorer.exe. When I try to fire up explorer.exe using the shell api: Shell ("c:\windows\explorer.exe") all that happens is that the explorer file manager opens, not the full shell. I know that it can be done, as there is a simpl little program called shellselect (available here. has me pretty stumped, all I know is that I am pretty sure I can't call it with the ShellAPI function.