Start / All Programs Screen freezes for 45 seconds

[Morgan]

About once a day or so, when I click START then All Programs, the "All
Programs" screen opens but it is blank (gray in color). There are no
programs listed. It sits like that, freezing all other activity, for at
least 45 seconds or so. Once it is finished doing this, everything
returns to normal. All programs are listed normally and other computer
functions return to normal too.

Any ideas about the cause and/or cure for this would be appreciated.

Thanks.

 

[Ramesh, MS-MVP]

Hi Morgan,

See if a shell extension is causing this. Use ShellexView:
http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/shexview.html

 

[Ramesh, MS-MVP]

BTW, in Shellexview, try disabling the third-party shell extensions. More
information is available here:

http://windowsxp.mvps.org/slowrightclick.htm

(See Method 2) and ignore the page title/symptoms mentioned.

 

[Morgan]

OK, thanks. i'll give it a try. It could take awhile. This only occurs once
a day or so. At least I now have something to try.

 

[Ramesh, MS-MVP]

Morgan,

Another possibility which I was thinking of is the incorrect path mentioned
for "User Shell Folder\Programs" folder. But, as you said the items are
listed normally, then I figured it's not the cause. Anyways, you could
verify the "User Shell Folder" values here:

http://windowsxp.mvps.org/usershellfolders.htm
http://windowsxp.mvps.org/allprograms.htm