Right Click Takes too Long on Windows: How to Fix & Causes
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.
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.
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.
Don’t know where my earlier comment stating that it didn’t work for me has gone! Yipee, fixed. What is not mentioned here is that you have to restart explorer. For a more detailed description see howtogeek.com/684164/how-to-fix-a-slow-context-menu-in-windows-10s-file-explorer/
I disabled all non microsoft, restarted explorer and it went away. I then enabled a batch and repeated. Problem still gone. Enabled the rest, and would you believe, the problem had still gone.
Thank you sir. Worked for me on Windows 10 64bit. I disabled all non-Microsoft stuff. Didn’t enable any back for non-Microsoft stuff since if it gets too long the right click list is cumbersome instead of being helpful.
No, didn’t work for me. Disabled all in turn but no difference. Then disabled all at same time and again no difference.
didn’t work for me. somehow, whenever i click on a microsoft office file this same problem occurs
thank you very much this shexview tool helped me remove apple icloud shell it is the cause for Very Slow When Right Click On a File
Sorry but it didn’t work at all for me….disabled all non-Micro stuff and refreshed and went to a different folder where I then tried to create a new folder….got a long delay and a not responding prompt at top…eventually…10 seconds later, it would work
Normally a chrome crashes because inefficient ram.so it can be avoided by better ram management, so we have to disable all other application that we don’t need at that timelike antivirus that is not needed, can be disabled temporary at that time.
Thank you Raymond!! And thank you Zads!! Worked perfectly for me on Windows 7…and it was iCloud ContextMenuHandler Class ver. 69.0.0.62 iCloud for Windows, Apple Inc. Or the related iCloud Photos entry ShellFolder, and also Shell Streams, also iCloud for Windows same ver. I have had years of right click desktop freezing/ or halting/very-slow for 30 seconds every time due to this….
hi. Thanks sir…. worked perfectly! that is very good
Thanks a lot
Great help!!! Thank U!!
Thanks, work perfectly, Dell customer services can’t help me.
Thank you! Worked for me. What’s interesting is, after disabling the culprit, (which ended up being something with Acronis) I figured I would try to enable it again and see if the problem was still solved and strangely enough it was… I guess something with Acronis was stuck and disabling/enabling it fixed the issue. Anyway thanks!
thank u so much sir…its working
Thanks guys. This fixed it. The only thing to add is that I had to actually reboot the PC. So, I ended up just disabling all non-microsoft extensions.
I have not determined exactly which one is causing the issue, but that is an experiment for a later day. :)
As shown in ShellExView:
‘ IE Context Menu Class’ for ‘Norton Security Shell Extension Module’
(right-click Norton Scan in the context menu is disabled)
– No more waiting several seconds for the menu to appear.
Great- that worked – disabling a random Apple has cured my right-click slow response when opening an image in an application. Thanks for the assistance,
Worked perfectly! It was a stupid iCloud context menu that was messing mine up, classic apple crap
Thanks heaps, super tool and fixed this frustrating problem
Great Tool!!! Worked for me!!! Thanks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I didn’t even have to use shellExView, I simply thought about the programs that are linked to explorer. First one that came to mind was daemon tools, so I uninstalled it because I don’t use it. Well that did it, no more hangups when right clicking explorer. Thanks!
Thanks, was looking around to figure out why my context menu kept getting slower and hanging more, i too had daemon tools, turns out it was my problem too with the hanging of the context menu.
Great tool and explanation! Solved my problem.
super, Merci
Please use long path tool
Great! Thanks I disable all non Microsoft files
Thank you so much! It worked with shellexview! Great Software! Hope you come up with many more solutions! Thanks again friend!
I removed the winrar context menus and it worked for me.
Even my issue was solved by removing winrar context menu
In order to minimize your work, use a simple technique by dividing the non-Microsoft context menu items in two, identify which half has the problem then repeat the process on the half which contains the offending item…
I used another tool linked from the shexview page called whatishang – that identified a context menu hang on my system real quick. Turns out most media files were set to be identifyable with GSpot, a media file scanning tool – which was installed on another computer which had been decommissioned, so the UNC path was no longer valid. Caused the comp to have to wait for a timeout every time a call to that was made. I’d been pulling my hairs out over that for a month…
Removed the offending registry entries for the unavailable app, and the problem is now solved. No more hangs for me!
Same for me! iCloud photo! Thanks for the great article
It was the iCloud Apple photostream and its context handler that was the culprit for me. Thanks for the tip.
thanks a lot man really appreciate your help
sometimes the right click freeze’s but overall it’s a lot better thank you very much
That worked! Disabled all non MS extensions, except for a few i recognized I used. Perfect.
How do u find who is the culprit ..??? Seriously gng mad trying to cure this
Unfortunately it’s a process of elimination and you have to try each entry in small batches or one at a time.
Bluewire General property sheet (whatever that is) turned out to be the culprit! Thank you so much for this solution to an annoying problem. Erik
Thank you so much dude! It works! Damn I disabled all those who are not Microsoft even my antivirus extensions and when i try to right click again it is blazing fast now!
thank you.
i have been facing same problem. now it fixed.
thank you so so much!
Thanx for the solution works like a charm!!
It has resolved the issue I’ve been having. Thank you. :))
BthSendToContextMenuExt Class
This was for me, too.
Thanks! Works like a charm!
The reason for my slow right click (Windows 8.1): BthSendToContextMenuExt Class
Thank you a lot
I know this thread is getting a bit old, but the problem hasn’t gone away! I had the same issue with Win7. Using the tools described above, I found that having uninstalled Symatec software, there were still links to non-existing files. Turning off these fixed the problem. Doesn’t say much for the Symatec uninstaller – there were still links everywhere!
One big Thank you :)
Thanks! For me, problem was IEContextMenu Class (Symantec Corp).
Same here. It was IEContextMenu Class (Symantec Corp).
Thanks so much, this helped a lot!
CCleaner can do this too :)
That was awesome dude! Many thanks
worked for me with Windows XP, just took a while with 300 to search thru and disable. for your reference my problem was called MPCBContextMenue.ContextMenu
Totally worked. Thanks man :D
To raymond,
Thank you, it work….!
Awesome. Thank you. My right clicks took 4-6 seconds to display. My culprit was an extension for my online backup service. Disabled and all is fine now.
Thanks so much! Exactly what I was looking for… great work
Thank You Very Much Man!! :)
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
I recommend Autoruns for this sort of thing. It does much more then just shell extensions too, and it’s available on Technet.
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
Thanks again Ray for the great information. This will be helpful to my computer.
Hi Raymond….Have a look at :
nirsoft.net/utils/shell_menu_new.html
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.
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.
wow! this is really nice!! I must try this : Thank u so much!
Thanks for the tips. This is what exactly am facing now.
Wear you at buddy? Haven’t seen anything in a long time. I hope things are good
Hi raymond
i also were looking here for any messege from you but not getting ny one, i hope every thing to be nice
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.
thanks…. somewhat helpful!
Hi Mr. Raymond, hope everything is fine,i dont recieve any update from your blog since January 4…Thanks for you help.
Thanks for the info.. :)
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.
hi mate. no updates? what happen. well regards to you. i wish that you give me a rapidshare account. thank you …
thanks !!!
One word – BRILLIANT !!
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!
thanks for sharing this trick
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
nice……………
happy new year! your article really helps me a lot! thanks and GOD Bless!
It does make sense most especially if you are in a rush hour. Thanks for wonderful share of the day. Best regards…
EXCELLENT – a first class tutorial – THANK YOU.
Happy New Year to you and your lady wife.
So, you had to delete the PASHLEXT.DLL file manually?
That has always been my problem before! Thanks ray. keep up the informative posts!
hey ray
have u mailed the winner of KIS their keys as yet ?
Thanks for sharing this! This has been a long time problem for me.
Thanks Ray…!!!
Thanks Ray, it was awesome… It is really bothering when you have to wait so long just for a menu to load!
Cool thanks ! :)
Thanks Raymond and thanks John C. for the tips, I’ll try that in next weekend.
I’ve used this utility and it works perfectly.
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…
That’s the kind of helpfult tips that makes this site so great.
Thanks very much Ray! Keep it up.
Thanks Ray for this useful add
I am also faced this problem too…thanks for your info..it’s really helps me a lot
great man
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
So thats how to do it!
(Enfin)
The rest of Ramesh’s site is well worth the visit
Thanks a lot & Happy new year
Hi Ray,
Thanks for this important tip.
Your blog is awosome!
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
nice article. so, you disabled the PA shell extensions. did any of the power archiver’s right click extensions work after that?
thanks
thanks for a great tip!
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]
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..
Very timely as far as I am concerned.thanks
Hi,
Thanks for this article.
Best regards !
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.
Thanks again for another nifty little utility. This as you say is definitely for keeps. Keep them coming.