Category: Windows
Isn’t it very annoying when you want to do something (efficiently) and something gets in the way and tries to stop or slow you down?
Several months ago I noticed that it would take almost a minute for the Windows context menu to show up after I right click on the desktop or in a folder.
This is distracting and you can easily lose your training of thought. Especially if you have lots of thoughts or a fast running train :) At some point I would even go to make myself another cup of fresh coffee or tea until the menu showed up.
I had tried two approaches. The first one was from Ewan Brodie who shared the following steps in a Microsoft answers forum.
Fix Slow Windows Right Click/Context menu by Turning off Privacy Options
Ewan Brodie shared these steps. To fix the issue.
1. Open Windows Explorer/File Explorer.
2. Click the 'View' tab.
3. Click the 'Options' button at the far right hand side of the view ribbon.
4. On the 'General' Tab, un-tick the two privacy options, and click 'Clear'.
5. Apply/OK to exit.
The problem should have gone away by now, do try creating a new folder and renaming it.
Display Drivers
Different articles claim that it could be due to display drivers that may be causing this.
I checked if there was an update for my display driver but there was none.
Shell Extension Programs
My suspicion is that a program has added itself to the context menu and was taking lots of time.
For this reason I decided to download ShellExView to troubleshoot which Shell Extensions program could be causing this.
Keep in mind this is for educational purposes only. Always make backups. You may you turn off an extension that was important and that you may cause issues with Windows.
I wanted the problem gone. I wasn’t interested in which program was causing this.
For this reason I decided to turn off lots of file shell extension handlers.
Normally, if you’re that curious you’d turn off one extension handler at a time and then test if the right click is still slow and continue doing this until you find the one that was causing the problem.
So I downloaded the ShellExView program.
The page below is outdated and may bring some memories from the 2000s.
To download the program you have to scroll to the bottom of the page.
That’s how many moons ago the software pages were structured.
https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/shexview.html
Next, I scanned the zip file online for viruses just in case using VirusTotal and Kaspersky Threat Intelligence Portal. You can either upload a zip file or paste the download link to the zip file.
I pasted the download link as it’s faster for the system to get the file rather than me uploading it.
Then unzipped it and started the program.
It took a few seconds to fully load and I saw lots of extensions.
The tutorial below from Win Help Online suggested that I hide all the Microsoft extensions (from Options) which I did because they are probably system ones and should be fine.
https://www.winhelponline.com/blog/fix-slow-right-click-crashes-shell-extensions/
https://techcult.com/fix-slow-right-click-context-menu-in-windows-10/
After I cleared all the not so important Shell Extensions programs my context menu shows in less than a second even without me having to restart my Windows 10 laptop.
Image credit: Tadas Sar (@stadsa) on Unsplash