Slightly OT - Vista Directories/DOS Batch

[Bill Troop billtroop@xxxxxxxx]

I can't think where else to post this, or who else would even
understand the questions, so here it is.
I am one of those people who like to have persistent explorer
windows. These help me keep my workflow organized and fluid.
One of the sovereign bad habits of XP and Vista is that, after a
crash, it erases these windows and leaves me with a blank slate. (By
contrast, Mac OS X seems able to retain open 'finder' windows indefinitely.)

So I have two questions:
1. Is there a utility that will keep one's explorer 'session' alive
even after a crash?

2. Lacking that, I wrote a simple batch file along the lines of

explorer /e,c:\usr\07
explorer /e,W:\users\bil\desktop\hd\usr\07
that, under XP, would at least get some of my most commonly used
windows back after a crash.
However, this batch file doesn't work in Vista. It all just grinds to
a halt, and the DOS process that invokes the command (be it
XyWrite/DOS or Windows RUN) grinds to a halt until the windows this
process opens are closed.
So my second question is, how do I invoke these DOS processes under
Vista? I tried KMD but that doesn't seem to be working either.