Right click breaks windows explorer AND computer window

All good advice, for which I thank you.

I do wish that Microsoft would siphon some of the resources they use to cram complexity into the next version of Windows into creating something like PC-Doctor used to be. And to work as hard at reliability as they do at "a whole new look for Windows 8".

I guess I'm a throwback, tho. I use my PC for word processing, excel, and numerical simulations (using JDesigner in Systems Biology Workbench, R statistical program, and Octave, a math program that Matlab users will be comfortable with). I use to be a power user, but the numeriical intensity of graphical programs now far outstrips models of disease and drug action.

Anyway, I'm going to go back to writing, using Word. I think I can avoid breaking my machine if that's all I do!

Thanks,

Jim

Hmmm. I do have 7zip. At first, I started a download from CNET. Used to be, you could get good stuff from CNET. Now everything on their site comes with cr*pware. I stopped it the second it asked "Do you want to install our wonderful IntrusivWare Program in addition to 7zip?" But it did get some crud on my disk. Malwarebytes removed it. Point is, it may not be 7zip per se, but rather the fellow travelers.

I looked at my ContextMenuHandlers in registries. Noticed something, which may be nothing. LEt me test you. Here are the keys (I've removed the HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers part from each line):

\ SkyDriveEx]@="{CB3D0F55-BC2C-4C1A-85ED-23ED75B5106B}"
\7-Zip]@="{23170F69-40C1-278A-1000-000100020000}"
\Adobe.Acrobat.ContextMenu]@="{D25B2CAB-8A9A-4517-A9B2-CB5F68A5A802}"
\ANotepad++64]@="{B298D29A-A6ED-11DE-BA8C-A68E55D89593}"
\BriefcaseMenu]@="{85BBD920-42A0-1069-A2E4-08002B30309D}"
\BUContextMenu]@="{F7CAA2A1-67A2-44BB-B20F-202FD8EB1DAB}"
\Open With]@="{09799AFB-AD67-11d1-ABCD-00C04FC30936}"
\Open With EncryptionMenu]@="{A470F8CF-A1E8-4f65-8335-227475AA5C46}"
\SDECon32]@="{44176360-2BBF-4EC1-93CE-384B8681A0BC}"
\SDECon64]@="{44176360-2BBF-4EC1-93CE-384B8681A0BC}"
\Sharing]@="{f81e9010-6ea4-11ce-a7ff-00aa003ca9f6}"
\Symantec.Norton.Antivirus.IEContextMenu]@="{FAD61B3D-699D-49B2-BE16-7F82CB4C59CA}"
\WinMerge]@="{4E716236-AA30-4C65-B225-D68BBA81E9C2}"
\XXX Groove GFS Context Menu Handler XXX]@="{6C467336-8281-4E60-8204-430CED96822D}"
\{90AA3A4E-1CBA-4233-B8BB-535773D48449}]@="Taskband Pin"
\{a2a9545d-a0c2-42b4-9708-a0b2badd77c8}]@="Start Menu Pin"

Did you notice that the first key has an extra space at the start? Is that right? Can a key start with a space? In any case, 7zip is in there.

I'll check out those other programs. Thanks much, Jim

Well, a document by Jeroen Mostert "", here, states that

"A key name may only contain printable ASCII characters (that is, characters with
values from 32 through 127) and may not contain spaces, backslashes \ or the
wildcards * and ?. Note that you can create keys containing an illegal character,
but Microsoft's documentation specifies that you should not use them."

Given that the key name is what's between the square brackets, I think Microsoft's Onedrive
definitely creates a key that contains an illegal space. I don't think that I messed with that
key, but I guess I might have morked it up mysel f. Again, I doubt it. I agree, it would be
interesting to see if other folks have the space. Guys and gals of sevenforums?

Whether this is the issue crashing WE on LPRC, I don't know.

Careful, as I posted on another forum, too. I find it interesting that the key in the registry has the illegal space, but also has the copyright infringing on BSkyB's "SkyDrive" name! Doubly illegal!

Given that removing Onedrive for Business fixed the problem (just checked - still working!), I suspect that the registry is NOT the problem. Still, fun to find an issue.

Ok, this is an interesting problem because its not simple. I did get rid of the prepending space in the skydrive registry key. Create restore point. Go to that key in regedit. Export to KeyOrig.reg. Edit file to eliminate space and save as KeyModi.reg on desktop. Delete the key in regedit. Close regedit. Right click on KeyModi.reg file and select Merge. Provide two affirmative answers to the questions windows ask, and you've got a spaceless key (tho one that still infringes on b2skyb's trademark of skydrive). This SEEMED to fix the problem, but later on, it was back.

So I went back and used the other poster's suggestion. With NirSoft's excellent ShellExView, I disabled a bunch of shell extensions, one at a time. It seems that the SpyBot S&D Explorer extension was at least part of the problem. Given MS' inclusion of a space in a registry key, I'm not ruling out the possibility that Windows is not doing something it's supposed to. In fact, the same command behaving differently depending upon the invoking context (left pane right click fail, right pane right click ok) is prima facie evidence that the implementation is not perfect. But anyway, after deinstalling spybot, my WE is functioning as expected.

This does not rule out a perniciously instable and non-robust Windows Explorer implementation. In fact, given that others are reporting issues depending upon which combination of several shell extensions are installed, I'd say that there is a bug in Windows. A frequently used program like WE should NOT be able to be crashed due to bizarre and arbitrary combinations of other program installations. This reminds me of the old TV program "Green Acres", in which the electric power would fail depending upon which combination of appliances you had plugged in.

The episode did allow others to introduce me to Explorer++, and I searched out Q-Dir. Both are excellent alternatives or adjuncts to the standard WE.

Thanks to all, esp. Callender, for your help in all this.

[Cross Posted on the Microsoft Forum]