Windows 7 - Menu Show Delay Time

Brink

How to Speed up the Menu Show Delay Time in Windows 7

Information

This will show you how to change the amount of time it takes for a menu in Windows 7 to pop, fade, or slide open when you hover the mouse pointer over it.

This only affects the user account that you are currently logged on to.

Tip

The Fade or slide menus into view and Fade out menu items after clicking Visual Effects options will also affect how fast menus open and close. Unchecking these options will help speed it up in addition to doing the steps in this tutorial below.

Warning

If you set the MouseHoverTime setting, then it may override the MenuShowDelay setting in this tutorial.

OPTION ONE

Using a REG File Download

1. To Have a Fast Menu Show Time
NOTE: This changes the menu show delay time to 20 milliseconds.
A) Click on the Download button below to download the file below
Fast_MenuShowDelay.reg

B) Go to step 3.

2. To Restore the Default Menu Show Time
NOTE: This changes the menu show delay time back to 400 milliseconds.
A) Click on the Download button below to download the file below.
Default_MenuShowDelay.reg

3. Save the .reg file to the desktop.

4. Right click on the downloaded .reg file and click on Merge.

5. Click on Run, Yes, Yes, and OK when prompted.

6. Log off and log on, or restart the computer to apply the changes.

7. When done, you can delete the downloaded .reg file if you like.

OPTION TWO

Manually in Registry Editor

1. Open the Start Menu, type regedit in the search box, and press Enter.

2. In regedit, navigate to the location below.(See screenshot below)
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop

3. In the right pane of the Desktop key, right click on MenuShowDelay and click on Modify. (See screenshot above)

4. Type in a number between 0 to 4000 (400 is default) for how many milliseconds you want the Menu to wait before it opens. (See screenshot below)
NOTE: The lower the number, the faster the response time. If you use an entry of 0, there is no menu display delay. However it is not recommended to use 0 though since the menus may be hard to navigate through at that speed. 20 is a good number to use.

5. Click on OK to apply. (See screenshot above)

6. Close regedit.

7. Log off and log on, or restart the computer to apply the changes.

That's it,
Shawn

Related Tutorials

rachaelo · 06-05-2009

Microsoft Knowledge Base article Q216445 says this works for Windows NT 4 only. Did you try this on Windows 7 and noticed any difference?

Brink · 06-05-2009

Hello Rachaelo, and welcome to Seven Forums.

Yes, I have tested it and can verify that it works great in both Vista and Windows 7 with a noticable difference.

Shawn

TeenerTim · 10-05-2009

Works on XP too. Just tried it.

Brink · 10-05-2009

Thank you Tim for posting back your results. Welcome to Seven Forums.

Darryl Licht · 10-29-2009

Actually it worked waaay back on NT4.0 and Win98! I used to teach students that trick in A+ PC repair classes I taught.

Everytime I used to do it back then, clients would call me or email me on "How much faster their PC was", and all I did was defrag, disk cleanup, etc, and a few registry tweaks.

This is still one of the best "secrets" out there, but todays HW is so much faster I doubt it is needed like back in the day!

Lucretius · 10-30-2009

Being able to see All Programs the second I click on the button from the Start Menu is awesome! No more of that domino-like action where the icons display one after another.

helijack · 01-11-2010

I gotta say.......this forum is awesome! I'm new to Windows 7 and this place is a godsend! Thank you so much everyone.

ps: I've been teaching people how to use computers since 1990, was glad XP came along, and now Windows.......without a doubt the best OS yet, IMHO.

Brink · 01-11-2010

You're most welcome Helijack, and welcome to Seven Forums.

subyroo · 01-30-2010

Thanks for jogging the memory bank Brink, I used a lot of recommended regedit changes in XP but forgot about seeing if similar things were available for Windows 7.

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