Launch any file by double clicking takes ages

[tonysab]

I am using a new PC (4 weeks old) with XP. I have 3 users on here, I
am the Administrator. About 2 weeks ago I noticed that on my user it
was taking ages (20-30 seconds) to get the pop up window when
right-clicking (to get Properties) on any filename in Windows
Explorer. Since then I have noticed that when double clicking on any
file to launch into an application (eg .jpg file to go to Paint Shop
Pro, .htm file to go to a browser, even a .txt file), takes approx 40
seconds. Tremendous for a 3.2ghz machine with 1gb of RAM! Has anyone
any ideas at all, I cannot think what has suddenly changed to make
this happen - the other 2 users on the PC do not have this problem at
all.
I had recently been trying to set up a wireless network without much
luck, a colleague suggested I might have a drive mapped to the other
pc that was causing the delay, but this is not the case.
Thanks in advance.

 

[Ramesh, MS-MVP]

Right click crashes Explorer.exe after installing Windows XP SP2?:
http://www.winxptutor.com/sp2/divxcrash.htm

Right-click is slow or weird behavior caused by context menu handlers:
http://windowsxp.mvps.org/slowrightclick.htm
http://www.bootdisk.com/bootlist/208.htm#4

Right-click is extremely slow only when Network is enabled:
http://windowsxp.mvps.org/rcdelay.htm