Joined: 21 Oct 2005 Posts: 5767 Location: In UR base snifin all UR pantys
Posted: Thu Jul 27, 2006 2:49 pm Post subject:
Hey Jecca -
It's been hectic - I think I can fix the right-click menu for you and it may help the "file" menu problems. I'm going to ask you to go into the registry editor now. using the registry editor can bugger your system permanently, so don't change anything else except where I say.
Click Start -> Run
In the open box type: Regedit
Click OK (the registry editor will come up)
Open "HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT" -> "*" -> "shellex"
right-click contextmenuhandlers
click Export
put in a filename and click Save
right-click contextmenuhandlers
click Delete
confirm the dialogue (click Yes)
close down the registry editor
restart your machine - you should now be able to right click and have the menu not hang your machine, try it and let us know.
I'm not trying to harm you with my advice... I just know it worked for others.. and I got the advice from experts...
Macromedia is a huge trojan package, which glitches up Windows systems... In W98 systems Macromedia stuff causes freeze ups and an assortment of irritating glitches similar to what you are experiencing...
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Hard disks wear out slowly... A hard disk can without warning create a bad cluster, even on new ones... That's what "surface scan is for...
If your hard disk has bad clusters, those parts of the operating system are inaccessible by the operating system, and can cause the kinds of problems you've mentioned...
Download "Power Defrag", and run its surface scan feature... If it finds any bad clusters in your hard disk, it will rewrite the data onto good clusters and quarantine the bad ones... You problems also sound like the problems bad clusters cause...
I had all those same troubles as you are having... I downloaded "Easy Cleaner" on the advice of a super computer expert.. and ran the free area cleaner.. and that deleted what was glitching up my PC...
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I found, in the past five years, whenever my PC had "explorer.exe" problems, it was usually from bad software, or a sloppy uninstal of something, or from a bug... and it always took about a serious two hour solid effort to finally fix the mess, working in the registry and in find, and running various cleaner softwares...
What ever it is causing that trouble, you would be best to do some serious cleanups in the registry... Pc OnPoint, and Reg Mechanic, and Easy Cleaner, are safe registry cleaners for the novice to use...
I'm hearing that "messing in the registry is like playing with hand grenades"... Not so, if you understand how to do registry backups and restores... The computer is pretty much idiot proof, once you have learned the basics...
If you surf the problems on the Net, and learn some about them, and go slow and easy, keeping your wits about you.. you can quickly learn how to do cleanups in the registry, and in the others areas of your PC's systems...
It can save you a lot of grief and money...
Generally problems are because something is there that shouldn't be there, doing something it shouldn't be doing... There are hundreds of free download softwares to search and destroy those nasty bugs...
Working in the registry is easy and fun, once you catch on to the basics...
If you don't learn it, you will forever be stuck with nasty costly problems which stifle and irritate you... For example: After you have uninstalled a crappy software, you click Run, type regedit, and in the registry you click find, and type in the name of that software you uninstalled, deleting every entry you find... It's easy as pie, and safe as can be... and you learn more about your computer... and it maintains your computer running fast and smooth... The registry is not such a frightening place to do things, if you think it all out while your doing it... And you can't really make a mistake in doing things in the registry.. If you screw up you simply fall back on a registry backup, and restore that back up, and the registry is back the same as before you started making changes in it...
The whole thing is, you are asking questions about complex computer problems, which require a bit of serious computer working knowledge to repair on your own...
I gave you a proper list of the basics that need be done to restore your machine... If you can't grasp the cures, or are afraid to try new stuff, then by all means, your best option is to get a couple hundred bucks together, and take the tower to a reputable computer service center...
I'm just trying to save you that expense... and I've said it as simple as it can be said...
Well I wouldn't particularly refer to myself as an expert, but I do have a bunch of certificates on my office wall with things like MCSE, CCNP and RHCE on them, so I guess I'm a kind of semi-expert.
Firstly Macromedia isn't a piece of software, it's a company. They make many pieces of software. I've seen Flash Player lock up IE/Explorer before, but not in the context of the problem at hand, and certainly not frequently. You want to see what Macromedia stuff does when it installs? Get an MSI snapshot tool like AdminStudio and snapshot an install, then you can peruse its inner workings to your heart's content.
You seem to be very fond of Windows 98, so I presume you still use it? 98 and XP are completely separate code bases and totally different under the hood in the fundamentals of how they work. Don't forget that 98 is still essentially DOS! Whilst a lot of UI characteristics are the same, the registry and filesystem "tuning" software which used to occasionally hold benefits on 95/98 can often do more harm than good when used on an NT based system (after all, 2000 was merely NT5, XP - NT5.1 etc).
I think monosodium is on the right track, and the symptoms indicate that at some point you've installed something which has added a shell extension to Explorer, or an existing one is having problems. When you go file/new all the things displayed are shell extensions (text document, folder, shortcut etc). Just like when you right click on a drive and can select "scan for viruses", that's an antivirus shell extension.
One way to narrow down where the problem exists would be to go into control panel and create a new user. Reboot and log in as the new user and see if the problem still exists. If it's gone we can safely assume it's caused by something in your Current_User hive or user profile.
If (and hey, you never know!) that cures it we can easily tell you how to move your email/favourites/docs etc over to a new user profile.
I've just realised I've been a geek outside of work time. Damn I HATE that.
It's a tricky one (pretty sure we've established that!), as it could be one of so many things. Once you get into process monitoring etc it all gets a bit excessively techy.
One thing I would say though is don't even think about taking it to somewhere like PC World. They won't have the faintest idea how to fix it, will probably wipe & reinstall, nuke all your files and charge you a fortune.
Do you have a proper XP disc? or just one of those useless "system restore" discs?
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