It is very common bug in Windows that it hangs up sometimes while working. The same problem is encountered with Internet Explorer. Its really painful to restart the system every time the explorer hangs. This problem could be overcome with Explorestart.

Explorestart is a free utility from NirSoft that simply restart explorer and Internet explorer. When you run this tool, all the instances of explorer (explorer.exe) and Internet Explorer.

Download Explorestart.