Cannot launch programs from right-click popup menu

jsampson45 said:

I have tried the procedure with Default Programs Editor. Although I saved the context menu it made no difference. The new option in the context menu that I had specified did not appear.

Are you sure you typed the correct path to the executable? It might be different on your machine.

jsampson45 said:

I should make it clear that all the options in the menu are affected, not just "Edit with Vim". This suggests that the context menu no longer functions, although it pops up on right-clicking a file shown in Windows Explorer. Many thanks, anyway.

Well originally you just sais text files were affected. If all context m enu items are affected then it points to:

A buggy shell extension that was installed by other software.
A program updated and it contained a buggy shell extension.
A program needs updating.

Anyway you say you don't want to spend time on this so I won't go into a lenghty step by step answer.

In brief:

Find all shell extensions and find which programs installed them. Check for any updates for those programs.

Also try disabling shell extensions (needs a reboot each time)

List all installed programs and sort by installed on date.

If you know when the problem started think about any software changes on that day or the day before.

A workaround if you don't want to fix it might be to use Explorer++ to navigate to files then check right click context menu (using Explorer++) to see if it works. It's not 100% guaranteed to work. You need to right click Explorer++ executable and run as administrator or use command line to run as administrator.

RUNAS "Full Path To\explorer++_1.3.4_x64\Explorer++.exe"

Replace "Full Path To" with the actual path.

Current list of problem software causing right click issues that I personally know of:

Spybot Search & Destroy
MyWinLocker
Old versions of Google Drive
Some zip (archive) software

There's various softwares that you would need to install to list/ disable context menu entries.