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Right mouse click on Windows 7 desktops hangs PC

We have 4 desktops HP running Windows 7 that hang when right mouse clicking. When we disconnect from the network and login locally we do not have the issue. Tried reinstalling drivers (nic,monitor etc). These machines recently had new 27" Viewsonic monitors installed. Tried replacing monitor with original one.

dlb6597

you have an invalid entry in your right-click context menu. these are located in the registry at HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers and HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\AllFilesystemObjects\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers. Check each of the entries for things that are obviously retired, etc. Some entries will have a reg_sz value that looks like "{12ABDD920-42A0-1069-A2E4-08002B30309D}", you may need to search your registry for occurence of that...then look at the value under the subkey InprocServer32...it will usually contain a path to a DLL or executable...I am guessing you will find one that points to a network location.

lcoiro

ASKER

We looked through the context menu and have not found anything pointing to the network. can the entries be deleted without harming the system?

dlb6597

no harm to the system itself, you'll just lose those individual entries in the right-click menu...you export those keys, then delete one at a time (I think you have to reboot inbetween these changes so Explorer re-reads these keys.)...to see when the problem goes away...then you have a copy to add the correct/needed ones back in. (just delete the offending line(s) from the reg export...

dlb6597

you might check out shellexview from nirsoft. it will scan all areas of the registry that house context menu entries...you can look through the path column to look for network locations...

http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/shexview.html

lcoiro

ASKER

We did not find any context menu entries pointing to network locations. Any other suggestions would be appreciated.

dlb6597

I would download procmon.exe from sysinternals/microsoft (or open a command line and run it directly \\live.sysinternals.com\tools\procmon.exe

this tool basically logs all registry, file system and network activity...it produces a lot to look through, but the answer will be in there somewhere in the form of file not found, path not found, access denied etc. Take some time to familiarize yourself with the filters...and you can log only files, only reg activity, etc.

clear the log, set any filters, then right click...wait a few seconds and hopefully you will be able to stop the logging (depends on how your hang is occuring...

lcoiro

ASKER

Still did not find resolution.

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lcoiro

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dlb6597

All four machines? Interesting.

lcoiro

ASKER

This solved the issue.