Check if you have any context menu items/programs that are in this list.
Use ShellExView to view all context menu entries that are enabled/active. The program is a bit old looking and hard to wrangle at first, but gives a complete picture of everything enabled. Disable all non-microsoft entries one by one until the problem goes away.
Once you have disabled/enabled any entries, you need to restart explorer.exe
before the changes will be active. You can restart explorer.exe
by opening the Task Manager(ctrl+alt+delete), selecting Windows Explorer
from the Processes->App
list and pressing Restart
.
Note: CCleaner also has a context menu utility(Tools->Startup->Context Menu
) but it doesn't list all entries that could affecting the load times.
In order to manually debug explorer.exe
, you can use WinDbg:
File->Attach to Process
or F6
- Sort
By Executable
- Scroll down and select
explorer.exe
. Make sure to select explorer.exe
and not the session instance in the collapsible menu.
- Press "OK" and wait for it to give you a console/text-input at the bottom of the command screen.
- Type "g" and enter. Your explorer will freeze until you give it this command.
- Look for any
ModLoad
entries that appear after the delay and the context menu appears. Any one of these could be the culprit.
If the explorer is crashing and you want to capture a dump file, start with steps #1-5 above then:
- Do whatever action(s) that freezes
explorer.exe
. You will probably notice it doesn't crash like normal because WinDbg has stepped in and is waiting for the next command.
- Make a dump file by running:
.dump /m mydump.dmp
- The dump file will be located wherever WinDbg was installed. You can also use a full file path to the desktop but it not always easy to have the path handy in the clip board to paste in.
The solution in my case was to disable the Perforce P4EXP.P4EXPContextMenuExtension
entry using ShellExView.
P4EXP.P4EXPContextMenuExtension
Location: C:\Windows\assembly\GAC_MSIL\P4EXP\2014.2.95.9073__null\P4EXP.dll
From: P4Merge
Company: Perforce
This delay was mentioned in the Perforce r14.2 notes but it probably regressed because I have version 2014.2 and still had the problem:
#975324 (Bug #75847)
P4EXP no longer builds the Perforce context menu on right
click of an object in Windows Explorer. This could previously
cause a substantial delay in display of the Windows Explorer
context menu if Perforce environment variables were unset or
incorrectly set or if the targeted server is offline.
Excellent answer and tip for troubleshooting my related "right-click image and 30-second delay" issue. Thank you. – rdtsc – 2015-10-06T13:57:43.480