Right-click crashes Windows Explorer

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Running Windows 7 Professional 32-bit, fully patched.

Each time that I right-click within Windows Explorer, Explorer crashes, and it has to be restarted. Quite irritating. I can only use commands in Explorer from the menu bars; context menu is useless. The same behaviour is seen in other file managers.

Does any Lounger have any ideas?

Dell E5570 Latitude, Intel Core i5 6440@2.60 GHz, 8.00 GB - Win 10 Pro

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As a PC tech, I can only suggest that (first) you try a different Mouse.
I’ve seen a failing mouse, send bad code to the CPU and the CPU will shut down the PC to prevent further damage.
Try it!

Also a stuck key on your keyboard (I had one last week) can cause all sorts of hate and discontent.
If you have a spare keyboard or can even borrow one, try that too.

Beyond that, I’d be doing a System Restore to a point before the problem started.

Good Luck,
The Doctor 😎

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See if anything in this article helps:
http://windowsxp.mvps.org/slowrightclick.htm

Jerry

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Running Windows 7 Professional 32-bit, fully patched.

Each time that I right-click within Windows Explorer, Explorer crashes, and it has to be restarted.
Does any Lounger have any ideas?

John,

Hello… Try running from an Elevated “Command Prompt” (running as administrator) “sfc /scannow” If there are any corrupt files this will repair them … No Quotes and space after sfc…:cheers: Regards Fred

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Fred – many thanks. SFC /scannow does not return anything out of the ordinary.

I am working away at jwitalka’s suggestion of using ShellExView, but nothing seems to be turning up there either.

Dell E5570 Latitude, Intel Core i5 6440@2.60 GHz, 8.00 GB - Win 10 Pro

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John,
Try looking at the “REGISTRY” entry ( After trying Dr Whos suggestions) on my “7 32” Pro OS my entry looks like my screen shot check yours… Regards Fred

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Fred – thanks for your continued willingness to help.

My registry branch – HKCUSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionPolicies has no key “Explorer”.

Could that be the root of the problem? What should I put in there?

Dell E5570 Latitude, Intel Core i5 6440@2.60 GHz, 8.00 GB - Win 10 Pro

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My registry branch – HKCUSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionPolicies has no key “Explorer”.

What should I put in there?

John,
Hello…
1. First thing and the most important …. Make a complete full system “Image”. There are free programs if you are not familiar with the “Windows Backup” (Messing around the registry is always risky ) Post back with any questions regarding “Imaging”

2. Yes this could be the problem …In Registry editor find the path as above…Click the “Edit” > New> Key (or DWord if you have “Explorer” entry) > Then enter NoDriveTypeAutoRun then assign the decimal value as shown in my screen shot …

:cheers:Regards Fred

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Fred – again, thanks for your support.

I added the registry key as suggested, thanks for the caution, but still find that Explorer crashes as before.

Perhaps I should have posted the problem details, see below:

Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: APPCRASH
Application Name: Explorer.EXE
Application Version: 6.1.7601.17567
Application Timestamp: 4d6727a7
Fault Module Name: KERNELBASE.dll
Fault Module Version: 6.1.7601.18015
Fault Module Timestamp: 50b83b16
Exception Code: c0000005
Exception Offset: 000086d8
OS Version: 6.1.7601.2.1.0.256.48
Locale ID: 2057
Additional Information 1: 0a9e
Additional Information 2: 0a9e372d3b4ad19135b953a78882e789
Additional Information 3: 0a9e
Additional Information 4: 0a9e372d3b4ad19135b953a78882e789

Does this help at all?

Dell E5570 Latitude, Intel Core i5 6440@2.60 GHz, 8.00 GB - Win 10 Pro

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I added the registry key as suggested, thanks for the caution, but still find that Explorer crashes as before.

John,
Hello… Take a look at the “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE” same path as well …Make sure that there is no Explorer KEY …”NoViewContextMenu” entry

Also Run a MalwareBytes Free[/url] scan just to on the safe side
:cheers:Regards Fred

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Fred – here also, HKLMSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionPolicies has no key “Explorer”.

Also, I have checked with MalwareBytes Pro, a full system scan, returned no problems.

I am becoming resigned to doing a full reinstall.

Dell E5570 Latitude, Intel Core i5 6440@2.60 GHz, 8.00 GB - Win 10 Pro

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Also, I have checked with MalwareBytes Pro, a full system scan, returned no problems.

I am becoming resigned to doing a full reinstall.

John,

Hello… I hope not.. To have to do that is a real pain ..Question : …Before this happened to your OS , can you remember what it was that you were doing ? Was there something that happened a day or so before that would help ? Or did you install an update … I have “Explorer” Registry entries all over the place …Something has made them “Get Gone”. Not trying to be “preachy ” about backup Imaging …but this is where it could have save you much grief…. …One other question have you made a ” Windows repair disk” this might be an option …to try a Windows Repair… Regards Fred

EDIT: Guess that you were typing as i was responding … Glad to Hear!!!:bananas: Thanks for posting your results … Figured it was a Registry problem of some sort.

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I’ve had the same problem for the past few weeks. I’ve had nothing to do with Acronis. Perhaps the “ownership” of the Registry Key is mislabeled. I’m guessing it’s something which was done by some recent Windows Update. Anyhow, I’m off to delete those keys — thanks for posting them! — and will try to remember to return and say whether the solution solved my identical problem.

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Fred – many, many thanks for staying with me on this one.

I think that I have the answer. Searching in another forum found others with the same problem, who had solved it by deleting two empty registry keys, HKCR*ShellExContextMenuHandlers{C539A15A-3AF9-4c92-B771-50CB78F5C751} and HKCRFolderShellExContextMenuHandlers{C539A15A-3AF9-4c92-B771-50CB78F5C751}. This solved it. All the old functionality restored.

Naturally, I was interested to find what owned {C539A15A-3AF9-4c92-B771-50CB78F5C751} in the registry; it appears that this key was put there by the Acronis True Image installer.

So, no reinstall, praise be, and, again, Fred, many thanks. Acronis, no thanks!

Dell E5570 Latitude, Intel Core i5 6440@2.60 GHz, 8.00 GB - Win 10 Pro

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Warning/disclaimer: I’m totally not a tech-savvy person,

I’m sorry to report my problem may be different from the of the OP, as I additionally have Internet Explorer crashing upon exit (APPCRASH, iexplore.exe, Fault module nvwgf2um.dll version 9.18.13.1100, exception code c0000005, exception code offset 00f66ea). None of the above suggestions made any difference to the behaviour of either the explorer program (Better Explorer, in my case — though Windows has also been reporting [not Desktop Explorer] Desktop Window Manager has stopped working [ not has crashed]) or IE 9.

However, I didn’t go through the whole process described at http://windowsxp.mvps.org/slowrightclick.htm , because I have a sneaking suspicion this may relate to the update of an NVidia driver which I performed several weeks ago. When I searched that DLL on the MS Support Community, it was mentioned as a graphics-related DLL. The coincidence is interesting.

So I wonder if the OP has also updated a similar graphics driver lately.

Mine is NVidia NVS 4200M. I obtained the update from the Lenovo website, specifically for my machine, a ThinkPad T420s. The driver version is 9.18.13.1100 dated 10/01/2013.

Not sure if this helps. If it doesn’t, please feel free to ignore! 🙂

Additional note: in the Advanced Internet Options, clicking “Use software rendering instead of GPU rendering” may help if this is a video-related issue.

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Use a kind of shell extension modifier program which would let you generate list of malfunctioning shell extensions and remove them manually. Why don’t go with Reginout, which I’m sure would help you get rid of this problem. If none of these helped, you’ll have to restore the system to an earlier date using System Restore. Click Start -> All Programs -> Accessories -> System Tools -> System Restore. Follow the wizard.

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Just adding my two cents… A number of my clients had similar issues and i traced the issue back to Spybot Search & Destroy 2. Many programs add “right click” functions to explorer and it can screw up as is the case with Spybot. It has been documented both in the beta release and in the final version. No fix so far to my knowledge…

PC’s were all Win7 Ultimate 64 bit.

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I had an unusable right click problem.

AutoRuns from Systernals found that DropBox had inserted 10 hooks into my system.
Some of those hooks actually launched Dropbox internet actions BEFORE I logged on
in fact Windows Event logs showed the DropBox internet action as the very first event recorded on start-up.

AutoRuns was able to disable or delete (my choice) those hooks.

In your case Autoruns may detect and control malware that could be in control.

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Just adding my two cents… A number of my clients had similar issues and i traced the issue back to Spybot Search & Destroy 2. Many programs add “right click” functions to explorer and it can screw up as is the case with Spybot. It has been documented both in the beta release and in the final version. No fix so far to my knowledge…

PC’s were all Win7 Ultimate 64 bit.

I agree. It solve my problem in no time….(just remove Spybot) running Windows 7 Home edition 32 bit

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Replying to three posts:

Lpking – no, I have nothing to do with any nVidia drivers, the problem was on a Dell laptop, with an Intel graphics controller.

LiveAloha – oddly enough, I do have Spybot S&D on this machine,

Alan.B – even more oddly, I also have DropBox.

Since my earlier post, announcing that deleting those keys solved the problem, I re-ran the ATIH 2013 installer, and re-introduced the “Right-click crashes Windows Explorer” problem. I have again deleted the offending keys, and returned the computer to expected and acceptable behaviour.

Dell E5570 Latitude, Intel Core i5 6440@2.60 GHz, 8.00 GB - Win 10 Pro

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Using another thread and “shellexview” I discovered that “better file renamer” was my culprit

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My problem, ongoing for several months, was that Windows Explorer (Windows 7) would crash every time I tried to right click on a folder (right clicking on a file did not cause this problem, just on a folder) Windows Explorer would crash. Thanks to posted suggestions, I uninstalled my Spybot Search & Destroy and this problem seems to have gone away. Thanks to all who have posted this suggestion. Spybot is a useful program, but I may wait a while before I try to install it and use it again.

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Hey Y’all,

I had a similar problem with a friends machine yesterday. Right-Click in Explorer caused message on failed loading wow.dll in a Temp folder then Explorer would crash and offer to reload. This turned out to be the MyWebSearch malware. I had to revert to Combo-Fix to get rid of it but that fixed it right up. HTH :cheers:

May the Forces of good computing be with you!

RG

PowerShell & VBA Rule!
Computer Specs

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I had a very similar problem with Windows 8 Pro 32-bit:
http://windowssecrets.com/forums/showthread//158413-Bug-with-StartIsBack-and-Windows-8-1

I used ShellExView to solve it — I disabled all DLLs except for the Microsoft ones. The problem went away. I then reenabled a few at a time, rebooting each time. Problem stayed away till I reenabled Format Factory. That was the culprit. I uninstalled the program. No more problem.

Group "L" (Linux Mint)
with Windows 10 running in a remote session on my file server

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