The SP2 'right click' problem

[Andy]

Does anyone have the answer or even a clue to the 'right
click' problem yet? I first encountered it after
installing SP2. Right-clicking on an icon on the desktop
or in Explorer causes the system to freeze with a Dr
Watson Postmortem error. But then even Dr Watson seems to
crash as I have to use the Task list to get rid of it.
I've done virus/Spybot/and adware scans with five
different scanners (Mcafee, Symantec, Adaware, SB S&D, &
Etrust), including those suggested on this newsgroup.
I've installed and then unistalled SP2 five times now and
I've defragged, cleaned up old files. Same result each
time. I've also tried installing from safe mode.
Is there any progress on this problem?
Lot's of suggestions that if I get rid of DivX it will
be solved but I can't find that on my system and lots of
people saying it's caused by a virus.. Can so many virus
scanners be wrong?
luv andy

 

[Guest]

I installed SP2 and don't have a right click problem.
Maybe its your video card drivers?

 

[Guest]

I'm guessing you have an obscure and/or old shell
extension with a bug. These things are notorious for
this kind of problem. Try disabling any and all that you
have and then work back to the bad one.

Also, see if there are any clues in the event viewer.

 

[Guest]

Have you Dr. DivX installed?
if so then do this:
Run ShellExView and disable this key
==================================================
Extension Name : EncodeDivXContextMenu Class
==================================================
That´s All
You can download ShellExView v1.01 in this link:
http://nirsoft.mirrorz.com/

 

[Doug]

I had the exact problem after installing SP2. Actually, it didn't surface
for about 2 days after I installed SP2 which seems a bit strange to me.
Even after a couple days I attributed it to the patch since this system has
worked flawlessly for a long time. For the life of me I couldn't figure
what program I could have started or what I did any differently to make this
problem come to the surface. I don't think it's a virus or adware problem.
I ran several scans for virus, adware, spyware, whatever, before I even
installed the patch. Did it all again after I started having the problem
and found nothing. My system would hang just after the first dropdown menu
would come up after right clicking, and before any sub-menus would appear.
The only thing I noticed while watching it was a occasional hour glass would
appear for a fraction of a second, then disappear again. Weird.

Anyway, I just uninstalled the patch and my right click works again. Even
though I did like the firewall and pop-up blocker, I don't think I'll be
putting SP2 back on this machine anytime soon. I think I'll give it a
little more time to mature

~ Doug

 

[Malke]

I'm guessing you have an obscure and/or old shell
extension with a bug. These things are notorious for
this kind of problem. Try disabling any and all that you
have and then work back to the bad one.

Also, see if there are any clues in the event viewer.

Some posters have found that disabling Spysweeper's right-click context
entry has helped. Perhaps you also have a program that has added itself
to the right-click shell extension and it is crashing. Look carefully
at the programs on your computer and try to remember what entries are
in the right-click menu. Anything third-party software like Spysweeper?

Malke

 

[PA Bear]

See http://forum.aumha.org/viewtopic.php?t=7307
--
~Robear Dyer (PA Bear)
MS MVP-Windows (IE/OE), AH-VSOP

Are You Ready for WinXP SP2?
http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/protect/default.aspx

WinXP SP2 Release Notes
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;835935

AumHa Forums
http://forum.aumha.org

 

[Don Taylor]

I'm guessing you have an obscure and/or old shell
extension with a bug. These things are notorious for
this kind of problem. Try disabling any and all that you
have and then work back to the bad one.

Ah, well that certainly sounds like credible advice, and someone
was nice enough to mention that ShellExView was freely available
and would let you inspect and disable these.

Grabbed a copy off the net, wowsers, 75 of these things active!
But almost all of them are Microsoft installed, there were two Real
Player entries and one Norton AV entry and one unzip utility I
installed years ago and still use. I started disabling those and
checking Windows Explorer to see if it would accept mouse clicks
or still just refuse and beep at me, as it has been. One after
another after another, no change. Finally got tired of this and
disabled all 75 of them in one swat.

And Windows Explorer still has the problem of refusing to accept
any mouse click and just "pong's" at me.

Along the way I discovered all my quick launch items on the bottom
line disappeared. Re-enabling all the extensions and rebooting the
machine didn't bring any of those back. Anyone know if I can get
it to restore those somehow? I spent some work configuring those.

Also, see if there are any clues in the event viewer.

Ah, again, good tangible advice. Unfortunately, since everything
I try to do with Windows Explorer hangs it, but at least I can
switch to a newly created user and for some reason that works, or
I could reboot in Safe Mode, that works, anyway, hop to the other
user and look at the events.

Nope, nothing there but each of the Application Hang's that I get
when I forcibly terminate the Windows Explorer, and the once-per-boot
error that has shown up for years, something about the speakerphone
not being set up on the modem, gave up on that years ago.

So, thank you for what might have worked out.

Any idea how I can get my quicklaunch back?
Any other ideas I can use to help diagnose and pinpoint this?

Thanks

 

[Don Taylor]

Ah, well that certainly sounds like credible advice, and someone
was nice enough to mention that ShellExView was freely available
and would let you inspect and disable these.

Grabbed a copy off the net, wowsers, 75 of these things active! ....
another after another, no change. Finally got tired of this and
disabled all 75 of them in one swat. ....
Along the way I discovered all my quick launch items on the bottom
line disappeared. Re-enabling all the extensions and rebooting the
machine didn't bring any of those back. Anyone know if I can get
it to restore those somehow? I spent some work configuring those.

Apparently disabling some of these whacks the taskbar settings.
I re-enabled showing of quicklaunch and they came back, order was
scrambled but that I can fix.

And I reran Spybot and AdAware, with latest updates, and another
full system virus scan with latest updates, still nothing. Never
had Divx or Spy Sweeper on the system I don't think, search for
those turns up nothing.

Next idea?

 

[Private]

This was happening to me too. I'm glad I found this post, I hope they
issue a real fix. But at least I can now still use SP2.