Instead of going through the process of re-starting your whole computer, a quick way to "restart" your pc is by using task manager to end process "explorer.exe." The Icons and start bar will disappear, and you can start up "explorer.exe" again by going to "File" -> "New Task (Run...)" and typing in "explorer.exe." Note: This will not work for setting changes that require you to actually restart your PC.

How is this restarting the computer? All this is doing is restarting explorer.exe, which just controls Windows Explorer and stuff. It doesn't even touch any of the other processes.

Indeed, this doesn't quite qualify as restarting Windows. The kernel is still running, services are still running, antivirus is still running, most apps will keep running too. I don't see the value of killing then restarting explorer.exe unless its process has erroneously lacked a file you need to delete.