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    Remember to restart your system in order to put your changes into effect. Commented Aug 6, 2012 at 13:57
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    You don't need to restart. Just kill Explorer.exe and bring it back alive. It's the parent process for e.g. cmd.exe (when started from the Start menu) Commented Dec 8, 2012 at 1:04
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    Processes read in system env variables at the time they start. So with something like IIS, restarting that service should bring in the updated values. Commented Jan 10, 2013 at 3:11
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    User path variables (My Documents, AppData, etc) are stored at HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Folders Commented Jul 31, 2013 at 20:21
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    Windows 7 uses the same registry locations. Commented Jun 2, 2014 at 16:06