For the past year or so, I've noticed that when right click on a folder in Windows Explorer, it takes forever for the context menu to come up. Forever evolved from very-slow to not at all and hanging up Explorer. I put up with it for too long and finally started to do research on the problem. As you know, half the trick of successful research is using the right search parameters.
I finally found the term 'context handlers' in one post and used them in my Google search " explorer context menu handlers slow". That led me to this entry "Right-click is slow or weird behavior caused by context menu handlers", which is an entry on Ramesh's Site, a collection of articles and resources for Troubleshooting Windows. For the problem I was facing, the recommendation was to get a utility called ShellExView: Shell Extention Manager. ShellExView was written by Ni Sofer (NirSoft).
The approach recommended by the article is to use ShellExView to scan the registry for all the shell extensions. Sort the results using "Type", so that the context menu handlers are displayed together and look for handlers you can remove. The article suggests disabling non-Microsoft handlers one-by-one until the issue is resolved. As I was looking through my list, I saw handlers for software I still had installed but didn't really use any more, those were easy choices for Disabling.
I disabled a half-dozen or so handlers and went back to my Windows Explorer, right-clicked on a folder and shazaam! problem be gone.
My thanks to Ni Sofer for ShellExView and Ramesh Shrinivasan for writing up this tip on his blog.
Posted by buggy at November 17, 2007 10:33 AM