Someone else has a similar post to this but I don't think anyone on the forum knew the answer.

When I right click icons, files, folders, or the task bar explorer hangs. It also hangs when I try to delete anything, and when I left click anything and press the menu button. I have to ctrl-alt-delete and end task on explorer.exe to bring windows out of it's hung state.

I'm using Windows XP, all service packs are installed and windows update didn't turn up anything useful. I don't know why hardware information would be important but I'll give some just incase:

1.4ghz amd thunderbird
512 mb sdram
20gb 7200 rpm hard drive - master (C
60gb 7200 rpm hard drive - slave (F

Nothing is overheating, the power supply is fine, no hardware settings changes have been made, everything is compatiable with everything else. It's had me stumped. Thanks to all who pitch in.

I have the same issue posted here: http://www.annoyances.org/exec/forum/winxp/n1060176586 - still no fix for me...

Yes, this happens to me too... It started when i installed a 2nd hard disk, or when i downloaded an IE6 fix, can't quite pinpoint when... if anyone knows of a solution, please post it

I have a similar problem 'less dramatic' everything works fine except when I Right Click on a Drive it causes XP Professional to Hang Ctr ALt Del then Task manager, kill explorer and then it all comes back. I have noticed PAGE FAULTS continue to increase with File explorer process (In the Millions). I have un-installed every MS-XP patch then reinstalled Still have it. No HW changes I can come in across my network and right click on my drive this works fine from another PC. My sons Dell does the same with XP Home. My Wife has XP on a Clone PC Similar to mine (I have more memory and a different MotherBoard) but she too has all the patches no problem. Maybe its CYGWIN or some other app.I am absolutely positive no virus or Trojan
Also I use AVG

i wouldn't mind finding out myself,,nothing i try seems to help,,so i end up rebooting and its fine after that.

Mine started to do this when I had Windows 2000, around about the time I did the IE6 fix thing. I wonder if there’s a connection. I also had two hard drives running, which might be just a coincidence.

I’ve since switched to XP, and it doesn’t happen any more.

I solved it, a program had added a CLSID to the directory object in the registry that no longer existed. If you delete it, it's fixed.

Don't suppose you could give the registry key you deleted? like HKLM\system\CCS\control\file system\
Directory OBJECT is a little vague searching for Directory or CLSID would return thousands of hits.
I would GREATLY appreciate knowing the key
big THANKS in advance for this.
Mark

Also check your Page File settings, also known as Vurtual Memory.

The problem was IOMEGA Hot Burn Pro. I bought this program awhile ago.

Microsoft error reporting actually came in useful.
Normally when this error happened The error reporting never came up!
The report generated a line
<EXE NAME="AFLDLL.DLL" FILTER="GRABMI_FILTER_THISFILEONLY">
A search of my hard drive found this dll in IOMEGA HOTBURN directory.
I uninstalled hotburn and the problem went away.
Mark

The key is HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory. Go there and from the shell and shellex folders delete everything that doesn't look right... Be sure to make a backup before you do it though, you might end up not being able to open folders...

i also had exactly the same problem. i also had iomega hotburn installed. since removing it i no longer experience the problem

Same problem. My fix:
Remove the key:
HKLM\SOFTWARE\Iomega Corporation\Iomega Drag'n'Drop\Extensions\1.0

You may want to first save its contents. HotBurnPro starts without this key present, but it may be hobbled in some way. I have two .reg files, one to remove the above key:

REGEDIT4
[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Iomega Corporation\Iomega Drag'n'Drop\Extensions\1.0]

and one to put it back, if needed. I don't yet know if rebooting is required when this is restored.

REGEDIT4
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Iomega Corporation\Iomega Drag'n'Drop\Extensions\1.0]
"AFLPATH"="C:\\Program Files\\Iomega HotBurn Pro\\AFLDLL.DLL"
"AUDIOEXE"=""
"AUDIOPARAMETER"="/AUDIO"
"DATAEXE"=""
"DATAPARAMETER"="/DATA"
"FORMATTER"="C:\\Program Files\\Iomega HotBurn Pro\\Iomega HotBurn Format.exe"
"HTML_HELP"="C:\\Program Files\\Iomega HotBurn Pro\\Iomega DragnDrop Help"
"TRAYICONINSTANCE"=dword:00000001

This is a common problem but apparently the solution is not widely known. If you have the "Eraser" security software installed, simply uninstall it and the problem should disappear. You can then reinstall Eraser.

Its a system reg thing that causes it, you can delete the mouse reg key then reinstall but claening your registry is always a good idea, wesearch for regcleaner, its nice and simple to us, delete all the non used old removed software/hard ware you dont have anymore. you may now notice that your system will boot and run faster. also system mechanic will do this as well, get a free trial.

There is abit on the forum about right click mouse menu which will go into details of the correct reg details if you want to manualy fix it.

Here's what I found to almost work as work around until M$ fixes the issue:
http://www.jsiinc.com/SUBN/tip6600/rh6646.htm

Except after following this instruction I still had the problem at least on the first click after boot. So I checked "best performance" which clears all the checkboxes and it went away. Next I guess you could try enabling the visual enhancements one at a time until the problem returns.

Causes all the "nice" XP visual effects to go away, but there's nothing more annoying than having that delay occur when you're running an AMD XP 3200+, 400 FSB, 1GB of high-speed ram and an ATA serial HD.

Have an update on this issue, as I had to do a system restore (bad install) and had to re-configure everything I did to fix this issue. Seems you can select smooth screen fonts, visual styles, and use drop shadows and use common tasks in folders with no real degradation.

There was improvement on response times, but I still had some slow context menus and explorer screen writes after startup. Then realized I had to reconfigure all my services, configured after the system restore. I follow BlackViper's advice in doing so, http://www.blackviper.com. This really made a difference on the performance of eveything that had to do with Explorer and the shell. Lesson...disable those unnecessary Micro$oft services and you will fly.

I also disable search for network folders and printers in the view options of explorer.
Now everything loading at startup, including NAV, loads faster.
Hope this all helps someone.
M

Tryed all other options - last thing was uninstalling eraser 5.3 - had the same problem with this program under win2k and now xp. If you have eraser and this problem then that's it. Possibly will be Ok if you don't install the explorer shell extentions when you reinstall.

Hey folks,

I had this same problem and finally found (thanks to others on other sites) that my problem was related to PGP. If you have PGP installed on your system and you turn of the PGPdsk service, you see these problems. I just turned the service back on (and set it to automatic) and everything now works fine. Others just remove PGP and that fixes it too.

Several applications that tie into explorer can cause this issue, the two I've personally seen the most have been listed above related to the Hotburner application, and either purposely disabling or failure of the PGPSDK service to start which will both cause severe hangup's of explorer on any right click. Besides the also mentioned registry area's that should be searched and cleaned out, you can also check other IE and explorer DLL hooks by going to Internet Options/Programs/Manage Add-On's and see if anything in there looks out of place from a possible failed application install/uninstall etc. I've also seen a couple of vary nasty viruses/trojan's that install themselves into explorer this way and are almost impossible to remove.