Right clicking causing laptop to freeze

Recon

As I type this I'm just after right clicking on an icon on my desktop, when I put the cursor over the desktop it changes to the "doing stuff" cursor (the circle in Vista) and it's the normal arrow over my browser window.

My laptop has been doing this for a good while now. The solution is to press Esc a few times, a dialog box appears saving my explorer isn't responding and gives a couple of options such as close, restart etc.



So you pick one (doesn't seem to make a difference which), then right click on the icon again and the usual right click menu will appear and I can delete, copy, paste or whatever.

This "freezing" also happens if I use the delete key, ctrl+c, ctrl+v or any other shortcuts like that.

Any ideas what could be causing it and how to fix it?

EDIT: added screenshot of dialog box

unnameduser

This might be caused by a bad context menu handler. A context menu handler is a shell extension handler that adds commands to an existing context menu (Example: cut, copy, paste, send to, Scan with Avg etc).

Below is a method google through up that should help. Good luck.

Download ShellExView and run it.

It will scan the registry for all the shell extensions. Once the scan is over and the list is displayed, you need to spot the context menu handlers. Sort the results using "Type", so that the context menu handlers are displayed together.

General rule here is to disable non-Microsoft context menu handlers *one-by-one* and verify if the problem is solved. If disabling one does not solve the problem, undo the disabled item and disable the next non-Microsoft handler. Do the same until the problem is solved and finally identify the culprit. Scroll right to see the Company Name column in ShellExView..

Recon

Thanks for that, I think it's working alright now. The one that was causing the problem was "TODO" or something like that, I can check when I'm on the laptop later.