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Fix for Very Slow or Hang When Right Click On a File or Folder

Posted By Raymond In Category: Computer

Jan
4
2010

I’ve recently reformatted my laptop’s hard drive and reinstalled Windows because it was getting a bit slow and also unstable. Well I normally install and test software on my desktop computer but sometimes I am too lazy to boot it up so I ended up installing it on my laptop. This time I am very careful on what I install because I do not want to slow it down and then had to reinstall windows and set it up all over again. It’s not difficult, just time consuming…

Weirdly after using the laptop for a few weeks, a problem started to appear that is the computer sort of hangs for a while about 10 seconds whenever I right click on a file or folder. I checked Windows Task Manager and there isn’t any process that shows any high CPU usage during that 10 seconds. I didn’t think it was virus because I could not find any suspicious autostart entries.
right click slow or hang
Then I figured perhaps it was some shell extensions that is causing the problem. For example, if you install WinZip on your computer, you’ll see a special WinZip menu when you right-click on a Zip file. This menu is created by adding a shell extension to the system.


The only extra context menu I see when I right click on a file or folder is PowerArchiver, RightLoad, NotePad++ and SmartFTP. So I disabled the context menu from the software itself (most software has the options to disable right click context menu) for all 3 software. Now the right click is totally clean without any extra context menu but it is still slow.

Then I remembered NirSoft has a Shell Extension Manager for Windows called ShellExView, which perhaps I can use that to view any hidden context menu. I downloaded it, ran it and ShellExView instantly showed me more than 200 items on the list. It was easy to check because there is a column called “Type” in ShellExView which will group all the Context Menu together. Then there is another column called “Microsoft” which makes it even easier for you to determine which context-menu doesn’t belong to Microsoft. Moreover by default the Non Microsoft context menu are marked for easier identification.
Third party context menu
What I did was right click on the ShellExView and select “Disable Selected Items” to disable one of the Non Microsoft shell menu extension and then try to right click on a folder/file. I repeated the steps above until I found that the culprit was “PowerArchiver Shell Extensions”. It is weird that even after I’ve disabled PowerArchiver’s “Use Explorer Shell Extensions” from the program’s configuration, the PASHLEXT.DLL file which is responsible for the context menu is actually still loaded, enabled and causing the right click to be very slow! ShellExView is definitely a keeper. Moreover it’s portable, small and it’s free.

[ Download ShellExView ]

Note: The 30 Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2010 winners has been selected. Head on to yesterday’s article for the results.


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    • Venkatesh

      Thanks again for another nifty little utility. This as you say is definitely for keeps. Keep them coming.

    • amit raina

      thanks for this
      i have this problem for very long time but u solve this.

      raymond another problem mine is that whenever i download things from internet then my firefox browser freeze for 1 minute and then download option appear. sometime whole computer hang but after download option appear then computer become normal why this happen some virus is there in my computer.

    • Murphy

      Hi,
      Thanks for this article.
      Best regards !

    • joe2005

      Very timely as far as I am concerned.thanks

    • ameer

      Thank you for this,
      I used it many times before, especially to disable Sony secuROM which was hog down my old XP VERY much when right clicking..

    • Romano

      Sweet !
      i’ve tested it on windows 7 32 and 64 bit it works perfect.
      does wonders for a 256 MB PC XD!!!! [Not my own]

    • roy raay

      thanks for a great tip!

    • Erdi

      nice article. so, you disabled the PA shell extensions. did any of the power archiver’s right click extensions work after that?
      thanks

    • Shineindigo

      Hello,

      This is indeed a good tool. It helps very much in customizing the right click menu. Thanks for the article.

      Hope you come up with a professional looking theme as you have stated in one of your previous post.

      Thanks
      Shineindigo

    • Victor

      Hi Ray,

      Thanks for this important tip.
      Your blog is awosome!

    • Mox

      So thats how to do it!
      (Enfin)
      The rest of Ramesh’s site is well worth the visit
      Thanks a lot & Happy new year

    • John C

      A few years ago I had a similar sounding problem, however I traced the problem back to a *very* large (1000s of files) zip file in the root (C:\ ) of my disk. The problem I had was related to XPs built-in zip handling. Every time I right clicked on a folder, XP would happily (and behind the scenes!) start navigating the humungous zipfile, leaving me hanging for up to 1 minute or so.

      (Re)moving the zipfile partly solved the problem (but it returned when I tried to open the folder and subfolders of the place I move the zip), and disabling XPs zip folder handler completely resolved the problem.

      To disable XP zip handling:

      REGSVR32 /U %SYSTEMROOT%\System32\ZIPFLDR.DLL

      To re-enable:

      REGSVR32 %SYSTEMROOT%\System32\ZIPFLDR.DLL

    • manoj

      great man

    • yoyo

      I am also faced this problem too…thanks for your info..it’s really helps me a lot

    • Mahmoud

      Thanks Ray for this useful add

    • John

      That’s the kind of helpfult tips that makes this site so great.
      Thanks very much Ray! Keep it up.

    • Sputnik

      Thank you Raymond !

      With your help, I have just solved this problem which I had since a long time : I was thinking it was maybe a corrupted registry, but finally it appears it is not the case…

      It was not possible to disable all the non microsoft contextual menu items with the only help of ShellExView however. To achieve this almost entirely, I have used a Glary Utilities Pro utility, the contextual menu manager.

      My problem seems to be gone for now with all the entries disabled : all I have to do now is to re-enable each item separately to find which is guilty…

    • Abhishek

      I’ve used this utility and it works perfectly.

    • Richard999

      Thanks Raymond and thanks John C. for the tips, I’ll try that in next weekend.

    • glow4u

      Cool thanks ! :)

    • http://amirbagheri.ir Amir

      Thanks Ray, it was awesome… It is really bothering when you have to wait so long just for a menu to load!

    • billy13

      Thanks Ray…!!!

    • Max

      Thanks for sharing this! This has been a long time problem for me.

    • Uber

      hey ray

      have u mailed the winner of KIS their keys as yet ?

    • darryl

      That has always been my problem before! Thanks ray. keep up the informative posts!

    • acaecus

      So, you had to delete the PASHLEXT.DLL file manually?

    • Merlin_Magii

      EXCELLENT – a first class tutorial – THANK YOU.

      Happy New Year to you and your lady wife.

    • norman

      It does make sense most especially if you are in a rush hour. Thanks for wonderful share of the day. Best regards…

    • raymund

      happy new year! your article really helps me a lot! thanks and GOD Bless!

    • koki thapa

      nice……………

    • http://madhabspace.blogspot.com sunkumarspace

      it is a great article, uninstalled 7 zip and keeps the usb version of it ,i use asc pro context menu manager it is simple and works for me

    • nitin agrawal

      thanks for sharing this trick

    • http://www.wordpur.co.cc Dave

      Thanks very much for this site…

      I downloaded it and unziped and ran on XP but after reinstalling XP just two days ago for 4 hours, I would really like to have a link to what is safe to stop or not to stop.

      I had to many MS dlls to choose from including inf extenuation files that made me shudder if I stopped the wrong file extension and messed up this New install!

      Anyone have a link to HOW to this app?

      Well thanks again for your valuable time and wonder-filled super help-filled site!

    • Rohit D A

      One word – BRILLIANT !!

    • tobi

      thanks !!!

    • ecko

      hi mate. no updates? what happen. well regards to you. i wish that you give me a rapidshare account. thank you …

    • willdo

      To Raymond,
      Thanks for this info,it’s indeed useful.On kaspersky av 2010,it is a good av but little difficult uninstalling after expiry.My av Mcafee virus scan even failed to detect a Trojan in my system,I would love if you could offer a giveway for Bitdefender or A-Squared Antimalware 4.5 for Raymond.cc readers,both offer comprehensive security online as well on offline and are well-proven security for any system.This is boost which is needed for this new year for nil malwares.If possible try it yourself,Agnitum Outpost Firewall Pro is also excellent and award winning software must have software.Thank again for all the work your doing here.

    • http://iDate.my Dhion Malaysia Dating

      Thanks for the info.. :)

    • Eric Steiner

      Hi Mr. Raymond, hope everything is fine,i dont recieve any update from your blog since January 4…Thanks for you help.

    • az

      thanks…. somewhat helpful!

    • Raj D

      Hi Raymond. Hope all is well. I have not recieved any mails from your site since the 4th of Jan. Hoping to get those updates soon. Thanks and more power.

    • Vibhanshu

      Hi raymond
      i also were looking here for any messege from you but not getting ny one, i hope every thing to be nice

    • http://www.fellhauersfreebies.com John

      Wear you at buddy? Haven’t seen anything in a long time. I hope things are good

    • http://www.iDate.my Dhion Malaysia Dating

      Thanks for the tips. This is what exactly am facing now.

    • http://theheatweb.com christian

      wow! this is really nice!! I must try this : Thank u so much!

    • Raakesh

      To Raymond,

      I knew of this software before,My advice to use Image Restore (IFW or Drive Snapshot or Shadow Protect),your is will be restored back in 5 minutes.

    • Raakesh

      To Raymond,

      I knew of this software before,My advice to you : Use Image Restore (IFW or Drive Snapshot or Shadow Protect),your os will be restored back in 5 minutes.

    • mohamad mohamad
    • norman

      Thanks again Ray for the great information. This will be helpful to my computer.

    • vedika

      thanks for this
      i have this problem for very long time but u solve this.

      raymond another problem mine is that whenever i download things from internet then my firefox browser freeze for 1 minute and then download option appear. sometime whole computer hang but after download option appear then computer becomes normal.
      i use win 7 32 ffox 3.6.

      pl.advice

      thank you

      vedika

    • xorl

      I recommend Autoruns for this sort of thing. It does much more then just shell extensions too, and it’s available on Technet.

    • jojojojojopogo

      good….. once again a half-done fix. I could also uninstall everything else on my machine…..
      I was looking for a way to make it faster, not shrink it down. If it is in my context menu, it is because I want it there.
      Now, all those dumb post are clogging google search results when we are looking for a real fix.

      thx anyway

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