Right-Click Very Slow after Ghost Clone

[Don Miller]

After a difficult upgrade to a larger hard drive using Ghost to clone my
original disk with Win2K (after many, many posts and I was finally able to
log on) I have found that when I right-click document icons, shortcuts,
device icons (e.g. to delete, send to, get properties, etc.) it takes about
20 seconds (with the hourglass showing and explorer.exe taking up CPU in the
Task Manager ) for the right-click menu to appear. The right-click menu
appears promptly when I right-click My Computer and My Network Places. I
suspect (I don't know why) that this has something to do with userinit.exe

Would anyone know what could cause such behavior (and how to fix it)?

Thanks.

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

I suspect that all of your problems have a common cause:
that you launched Win2000 while having two copies of the
same installation in your machine (on the old disk and on
the new disk), both having the same SID. When Windows
detects two folders of its current installation, it sometimes
changes drive letters in a rather unexpected way, e.g. by
turning drive C: into drive F:. Sometimes it goes looking
for things on a drive that may no longer exist. This is
possibly what's happened to your installation. It would
certainly explain the long delays. You could probably
prove it by examining one of these icons with a binary
lister.

Over the past six years or so I have imaged hundreds of
PCs, without problems (using DriveImage rather than Ghost).

If I was in your position then I would recreate the sluggish
icons. If this did not work then I would do this:
1. Borrow or buy a small hard disk. 2 GBytes will do for
most Win2000 installations, unless you decided to mix
your data with your operating system).
2. Copy the old drive C: onto the borrowed disk.
3. Remove the old disk, then install the new disk as
the primary master.
4. Launch Win2000. Everything should work just fine.

Alternatively you could do this, with some long-term
planning in mind:
- Reload Win2000 from scratch.
- Use Ghost to take a snapshot of your installation.
- Update the snapshot once every six months.
- Use the snapshot if and when the installation goes bad.

This is the approach I take with all the machines I am
responsible for. It's saved me enormous amounts of
time.

 

[Don Miller]

I suspect that all of your problems have a common cause:

that you launched Win2000 while having two copies of the
same installation in your machine (on the old disk and on
the new disk), both having the same SID.

The original disk with Win2K is in a drawer. I use the ghosted drive as the
master/boot and another drive as the slave.

If I was in your position then I would recreate the sluggish
icons.

I don't know what "recreate" icons means. Later, I found that in any
Explorer window that I can highlight any document/file/icon and when I try
to access the File menu (Edit, View, etc. all work fine) the same thing
(waiting 20 secs) happens for any document/icon I select.

If this did not work then I would do this:

1. Borrow or buy a small hard disk. 2 GBytes will do for
most Win2000 installations, unless you decided to mix
your data with your operating system).

I am inclined to just start over without fooling with partitions on a
120GByte drive. My Program Files on my original disk is 7GBytes alone.

 

[O1d_Dude]

I'm having exactly the same problem (20 second delay
following a right-click for context menu) and I didn't
Ghost a new image into my system.

I just noticed this behavior in the last few days.

Also noticed that simply highlighting a file and pressing
the Delete key produces the same 20 second delay before
bringing up the Delete File dialog box.

Puzzling, no?

Beyond what you have described with the 20 second

 

[Kevin]

I'm having the same problem, my computer was just working
fine yesterday and just today it starts acting like this.
ive noticed that nortan antivirus loads very slowly. maybe
norton is causing the slow load?

 

[Dave Lerner]

I'm having exactly the same problem (20 second delay
following a right-click for context menu) and I didn't
Ghost a new image into my system.

I just noticed this behavior in the last few days.

Also noticed that simply highlighting a file and pressing
the Delete key produces the same 20 second delay before
bringing up the Delete File dialog box.

I ran into the same problem today, and suspected it was related to a recent
update (via Live Update) of Norton SystemWorks 2003. Disabling the Norton
background tasks (Auto Protect, etc) seems to have resolved the problem for
the time being.

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

Maybe you people have a new virus. Have you tried
scanning it with an external virus scanner,
e.g. on www.antivirus.com ("free online scan").

 

[o1d_dude]

Thanks for the heads up on NAV.

Yes, I did just use LiveUpdate on both of my machines in
the last day or so and installed the recommended updates
to the system apps. Now they both exhibit the same
behavior.

Time to shake Symantec's tree.

 

[Me_2]

Hmmm. I also have NAV and it's setup to automatically
updated NAV and the latest virus definition files. I just
disabled auto-protect, but I am still seeing the same
behaviour: with windows explorer and the quick-launch.

Any other suggestions?

 

[John]

I have same problem and am seeing lots more reporting it
today. More evidence: problem goes away when you unplug
your ethernet cable. I've scanned w/ Norton AV and also
w/ three (!) Spybot removal programs. System seems clean,
but still have the right-click delay.

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

There are several reports in various newsgroups suggesting
that the problem affects all icons that have a Norton item
under "Properties". So far, uninstalling NAV appears to be
the only cure.

 

[John]

Per earlier post's advice, I also scanned for virus with
the online programs at Symantec and www.antivirus.com. I
couldn't find anything at Symantec's support site. I'm
using NAV 2003 Pro. I'll uninstall and post the results.

 

[Don Miller]

Hmmm... maybe I'll leave my drives alone. I was going to spend the day
swapping and reformatting drives.

I too, did the latest Norton Live Update (when I bought Norton Ghost).

 

[Don Miller]

AND I can't seem to find anywhere on the Symantec site that anyone can
report these things without spending $29.95!!!!

 

[John]

Uninstalling NAV stopped the problem -- obviously not a
fix. I'm going to lay low for a day and see what comes
out of Symantec.

 

[Dave Lerner]

AND I can't seem to find anywhere on the Symantec site that anyone can
report these things without spending $29.95!!!!

They used to have online message boards for support. I guess they decided
that all the "Why can't you fix this?" posts were bad for business.

I found one article at http://symantec.com that described a similar problem
(slowness), and it suggested downgrading the Common Client Event Manager. I
tried replacing Program Files/Common Files/Symantec Shared/ccEvtMgr.exe
version 1.0.9.2 with version 1.0.3.4 provided in that article, but it didn't
appear to resolve problem. Turning off Norton Anti-Virus Auto-Protect,
Smart Sweep/Internet Sweep and System Doctor seemed to resolve the issue.
Then I reenabled Auto-Protect, and haven't seen a reoccurrence of the
problem (yet).

 

[Paolo Arosio]

Don Miller scriveva fra l'altro:

After a difficult upgrade to a larger hard drive using Ghost to clone
my original disk with Win2K (after many, many posts and I was finally
able to log on) I have found that when I right-click document icons,
shortcuts, device icons (e.g. to delete, send to, get properties,
etc.) it takes about 20 seconds (with the hourglass showing and
explorer.exe taking up CPU in the Task Manager ) for the right-click
menu to appear. The right-click menu appears promptly when I
right-click My Computer and My Network Places. I suspect (I don't
know why) that this has something to do with userinit.exe

Would anyone know what could cause such behavior (and how to fix it)?

I repeat here a q&d work around:
backup and then delete the value from the following registry keys:

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers\Symantec.Norton.Antivir
us.IEContextMenu]
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Drive\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers\Symantec.Norton.Ant
ivirus.IEContextMenu]
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Folder\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers\Symantec.Norton.An
tivirus.IEContextMenu]

As someone here pointed out, the most annoying problem was the delay in
context-menu opening. Breaking the link between right-click and NAV
seems to solve this issue.

HTH &
Regards,
Paolo Arosio

 

[Belgarion]

Here's a work around for the Norton Anti Virus slow bug.

If you have Norton Antivirus and got the Jan 7 2004 ish update, you
are probably getting a long delay opening files, opening Norton
Antivirus configuration panels, openning office docs and even right
clicking.
If you disconnect your ethernet, it fixes it, but thats not a good
solution if you are networked and require it.
Symantec will probably have a fix later but for now, here's what we
found that works for now.

1. First, disconnect your ethernet, otherwise this process will be
verys slow.
2. Go to your Norton Antivirus, and disable the automatic Liveupdate
3. Go to C:\Program Files\Common Files\Symantec Shared
4. Rename the file called CommonClient.dat to something else like
CommonClient.dat.bad
5. Rename the file called CommonClient_old.dat to CommonClient.dat
6. Reconnect your ethernet.
7. Until theres a new fix for this, DON'T do client updates with NAV's
liveupdate!

Now, you can right click files again, open NAV's control panel,
actually have your office files scanned, etc.

If you don't find the right CommonClient.dat file, try to find an
older version from another PC that did not get the latest update.

As a last resort, reinstall NAV, and don't do the client update.
Hope that helps, it worked for me and 5 other co-workers who had
automatic live updates enabled!

 

[Belgarion]

Forgot to say, put these in your hosts file:
127.0.0.1 sitefinder-idn.verisign.com
127.0.0.1 crl.verisign.com

From: (e-mail address removed)
Reply-To: (e-mail address removed)
To: (e-mail address removed)
Subject: Re: Right-Click Very Slow (due to Norton Antivirus, workaround fix)
Date: Thu, 8 Jan 2004 08:57:04 -0800

From: (e-mail address removed) (Belgarion)
Newsgroups: microsoft.public.win2000.general,microsoft.public.cn.office,microsoft.public.office.misc,microsoft.public.excel,alt.os.windows2000
Subject: Re: Right-Click Very Slow (due to Norton Antivirus, workaround fix)
References: <[email protected]>

<[email protected]>

 

[Yaff]

I'm yet another victim of this thing.

As other said, it seams to be related with Norton Updates.

I also noticed TCP connection on verisign.com everytime
I right-click on Icons.

I think it's time to hammer Symantec's support.
I just rerun Live Update (many new crap since yesterday)
Symantec wants me to reboot... I'll be right back to tell you if they fixed
it.