Solved Explorer crashes when right clicking mouse but not keyboard

[MrDeepFreeze]

My Explorer window will crash every time I right click a file or folder no matter what type it is. I can however right click items on my Desktop without this problem. I also found that I can "right click" using Shift-F10 and Explorer won't crash. So it only happens when using the mouse. I've done all sorts of things including scanning for infection, SFC /SCANNOW, disabling all the context menu items via regedit, cleaning the registry with ccleaner, etc.

What could be causing this?

 

[MilesAhead]

It will save about a day of Q&A if you

Edit System Specs

 

[MrDeepFreeze]

Done.

 

[MilesAhead]

Have you installed a program that has a context menu entry for both files and folders? I don't know why it would be sensitive to mouse and not keyboard unless the mouse hover triggers something.

For all files it would be under this registry key
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shell

If you don't want to risk Regedit there are free programs that only display registry keys without allowing any changes.

edit:
This one I've used. The author has many fine system utilities:
http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/regscanner.html

 

[MrDeepFreeze]

Yes. I did both. I used the Nirsoft program along with backing up the registry entries, deleting them all, rebooting, and restoring them after finding that the issue still exists. It is very interesting that the mouse click only triggers it and I know that sounds crazy but I tested it quite a bit and it was very stable when using Shift-F10 but crashed 100% of the time when using the mouse right click. ugh.

 

[Ztruker]

Try this: How to perform a clean boot in Windows 8.1, Windows 8, Windows 7, or Windows Vista

 

[MilesAhead]

Event logs seem to be a last resort.
Yet another NirSoft should make using them easier:
Alternative to standard event viewer of Windows

It may say what program crashed Explorer if we are lucky.

 

[Ztruker]

That's a nice, easy to use program, thanks for the tip.

 

[MrDeepFreeze]

SugarSync was the problem.

 

[MilesAhead]

Glad you resolved it.