Windows 10: Fix Slow or Freezing Right Click Context Menu in Windows

How to: Fix Slow or Freezing Right Click Context Menu in Windows

How to Fix Slow or Freezing Right Click Context Menu in Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 10

A context menu is a graphical user interface (GUI) that appears when you right click or press and hold on an item (ex: desktop, file, folder, drive, etc...) in Windows. A context menu can have menu items and sub-menus with a list of options or actions available for the item you right clicked on.

When you install 3rd party apps, some may include their own shell extensions that add items to the right click context menu.

If an app's added shell extension isn't working properly, it can cause a context menu to be extremely slow or freeze when you right click to open the context menu.

This tutorial will show you how to troubleshoot and fix slow or freezing right click context menu caused by shell extensions in Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 10.

You must be signed in as an administrator to be able to perform the steps in this tutorial.




Here's How:

1 Download ShellExView from NirSoft.

2 Right click or press and hold on the download ZIP file (ex: "shexview-x64.zip), and click/tap on Extract All. (see screenshot below)



3 Run the shexview.exe file. (see screenshot below)



4 If prompted by UAC, click/tap on Yes to approve. (see screenshot below)



5 In ShellExView, click/tap on Options on the menu bar, and click/tap on Hide All Microsoft Extensions to check it. (see screenshots below)

We want to check Hide All Microsoft Extensions since the issue would only be caused by shell extensions added by 3rd party apps, and not shell extensions added by Windows.






6 Look for Context Menu items listed in the Type column in ShellExView. These will be the 3rd party shell extensions that one or more could be causing the slow or freezing context menu issue. (see screenshot below)



7 Right click on a listed Context Menu extension name you think may be the cause, and click/tap on Disable Selected Items. (see screenshot below)



8 Click/tap on Yes to confirm. (see screenshot below)



9 Restart the explorer process to apply. (see screenshot below)



10 Open the context menu that is slow or freezing to test if the context menu is now fixed or not.

11 If the context menu is not fixed, then repeat steps 7 to 10 above to disable another Context Menu extension name until the context menu is fixed.

12 Once you find the culprit Context Menu extension name, select all disabled Context Menu extension names that are not the cause, and click/tap on Enable Selected Items. (see screenshot below)

You can press and hold the Ctrl while you click/tap on Context Menu extension names to select more than one, and release the Ctrl when finished selecting items.




13 Click/tap on Yes to confirm. (see screenshot below)



14 Restart the explorer process to apply. (see screenshot below)



15 Verify the context menu is still fixed.

16 When finished, you can close ShellExView.


That's it,
Shawn


Related Tutorials

• How to Enable or Disable Delay Send to Context Menu Build in Windows 10
• Fix Context Menu Items Missing when more than 15 Files are Selected in Windows
• How to Change Menu Show Delay Time in Windows 10
• How to Perform a Clean Boot in Windows 10 to Troubleshoot Software Conflicts

:)

 

Feature suggestion: Add right-click menu

Suggestion: Please add a Windows 7 Jump-List and/or right-click menu to the GPU-Z icon in the Windows taskbar. Possible menus in it would be "Exit" and "About GPU-Z...".
Maybe also "Switch to tab 1/Switch to tab 2/Switch to videocard 1/Switch to videocard 2" too.
Examples of programs that have such menus are ICQ, Skype, AIM.

NOTE: It seems for a right-click menu, Windows 7 is not needed - it works on WinXP and Vista too.
But even a Windows 7 Jump-list may be good enough.
What do you think?

 

Right click context menu of Windows 10 is excrutiatingly slow in taskbar

Hello,

Running Windows 10, latest update (08.08.) and latest drivers on an Asus Zenbook 14 (i5 CPU). I recently had to restore Windows, ever since then the context menu of some applications is extremely slow.

When I right click on apps on the taskbar, they usually open the context menu of every application ( un/pin, recent documents, other settings).

This works fine for all applications in less than a second EXCEPT for Excel, Powerpoint and Outlook. Whenever I try to open the context menu of Office Apps it takes 20-30 seconds to open the recently used documents.

I've already re-installed Office and Onedrive to no avail. Any suggestions?

 

Context Menu "Open with" freeze

This problem annoyed me for a week

3 related issues:

• context menu works fine, and all submenus open well such as "view" and "sort by", except "Open with":
  • when i hover on "Open with", Windows Explorer freezes and i have to restart it in Task Manager
  • some files won't even let me open context menu, they just freeze Windows Explorer
    
• image thumbnails and sometimes taskbar icons disappear or become
  blank icons of paper (refresh doesn't work):
  • when i try to upload an image to any website (Facebook or Steam) i can't see which blank piece of paper to choose
• cannot access "Personalisation" or "Accounts" in system settings:
  • when i try to change my desktop background or change my account profile picture, "Settings" app freezes and i have to end task in Task Manager

Solutions i have tried:

• AdwCleaner
• disabling 3rd party programs in ShellExView
• clean boot
• safe mode boot
• elevated cmd
  • Sfc /scannow
  • thumbnail cache clear
• PC reset

Nothing worked

Windows 10 Home 64-bit

8gb RAM

Intel Core i7 4700MQ

Intel HD Graphics 4600

Toshiba Satellite P75-A7100

 

Right Click New Context Freeze

Hello, I'm still having problems with my context menu when I right click on the desktop and go to "New" It freezes before showing any options. I have uninstalled programs that had placed items in the new context menu so at this moment I only have the default things, but it's still freezing each time.
My computer is fully updated, and I've scanned for viruses and all that jazz with no problems. This bug or whatever it is, is super annoying when trying to create new folders and such.
When using the right click new context menu inside of my documents or downloads folder it may freeze a tiny bit, but not as long as it freezes on the desktop.

I did search google and a lot of people were reporting having the same issues and it was address as a Windows 10 problem and there was going to be an update to fix it, however as I stated I'm fully updated and I'm still having this problem.

 

How do I fix right click context menu spacing?

Hi Josh,

We appreciate your time and effort for getting back to us.

I suggest you to follow the below steps to change the menu size and check.

• 
  Right click on the Start icon and click on Control Panel.
  
• 
  Click on Display.
  
• 
  Under the Change only the text size, click on the drop down and select the
  Menus option.
  
• 
  Reduce the size of the Menu by clicking on the drop down and click on
  Apply.
  

Kindly let us know if you need any further assistance with Windows. We are glad to assist you.

Thank you.