Cleanly ending explorer.exe without getting a reboot dialog ?

Hello all,

I have a need to terminate the "desktop" (explorer.exe) cleanly, allowing it
to write its settings to the registry (to than overwrite some of those
:-) ).

The problem is that when I "taskkill /im explorer.exe" I get a "Turn of
computer" dialog, which I cannot use.

I can ofcourse get rid of that "turn of" dialog by adding the "/f" argument
to the above taskkill command, but than the programs current settings are
discarded (not written to the registry).

I've also been googeling for a way to ask the explorere.exe proces to
"flush" its settings, but didn't find any leads.

In short, I've got a catch-22 on my hands. Does anyone have an idea how
to break it ?

Regards,
Rudy Wieser