Solved "Send To" empty

[allend66]

This has been happening more frequently as time has gone on. I right click on *anything and with the Send To context menu it will be blank more times than filled in as normal. See screenshot of problem.

I followed Brink's tutorial on restoring send to items - no difference. Anybody got any ideas about this, please?

MSE says I'm clean, so probably not a virus...

 

[Layback Bear]

That good you run MSE. Some virus and malware will remove that so you can't send they away. I would also run Malwarebytes Anti Malware and Super Anti Spyware. They are free and work well. Be sure you update them before running them. No one program finds everything. That's why I use several. If you followed Brinks tutorial correctly it should of worked if their is no bad things on your computer.
Be sure and get back to us on your results or if you need any more help.

 

[allend66]

Well, after fighting with the download page at MajorGeeks, finally got Malware Bytes AM on & updated. Clean.

Any other suggestions?

 

[Brink]

Hello Derek,

You could try doing a system restore using a restore point dated before "Send To" was empty, if available and not to far back, to see if that may be able to fix this for you.

Hope this helps,
Shawn

 

[SIW2]

Try merging this .reg file

View attachment sendtoall.zip

 

[johnnya]

The simplest, fastest, hassle free way to download Malwarebytes is to download from Filehippo. One click and you have it. Link below.
Download Malwarebytes Anti-Malware 1.50.1 - FileHippo.com
Hope this helps in the future
Regards
JohnnyA

 

[allend66]

@Brink: Thanks shawn, but this started happening very infrequently, a long time ago. The frequency has increased steadily and now it seems it happens 75% of the time. No restore point.

@SIW2: Thanks - tried it, didn't work (screenshot).

@johnnya: Yep, got it, thanks.

 

[SIW2]

I suppose you can see sendmail.dll.mui in system32\en-us, and sendmail.dll in system32?

 

[allend66]

I suppose you can see sendmail.dll.mui in system32\en-us, and sendmail.dll in system32?

Check - 5kb & 68kb.

But why couldn't the reg file be merged?

 

[Brink]

I suppose you can see sendmail.dll.mui in system32\en-us, and sendmail.dll in system32?

Check - 5kb & 68kb.

But why couldn't the reg file be merged?

The REG files couldn't be completely merged since the {7BA4C740-9E81-11CF-99D3-00AA004AE837} CLSID key in it is protected and owned by TrustedInstaller in the registry. This is to prevent them from being messed with. Since you were not able to, then there is most likely nothing wrong with them since they have not been changed.

As a test, create a new administrator account, and see if "Send To" is working properly in it.

 

[allend66]

New Admin account works well.

 

[Brink]

That's great news.

If you like, you could just copy anything from your old account's user folders into your new account's folders. Next, copy any shortcuts from the old account's Start Menu into the new account's Start Menu using OPTION ONE in the tutorial below. After everything checks out ok, you could delete the old user account if you like to only use the new one.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/296-start-menu-all-programs-add-delete-shortcuts.html

 

[allend66]

OK Shawn, that's probably the way I'll go, but just a quick question: Whenever I install software, whenever I get the option to "instal for current user only" or "all users" I always choose current only - but that shouldn't matter should it... just make shortcuts in my new admin start menu? There's no other problem be it access or compatability, right?

I'll first rename my original nonworking account allend66 --> allend66-old then my new account allend66-new --> allend66. This shouldn't cause problems with my synced backups c:\users\allend66 --> X:\ (truecrypt my documents container)?

 

[SIW2]

You might have an issue with encrpted files - someone who uses truecrypt may be able to advise.

 

[Brink]

OK Shawn, that's probably the way I'll go, but just a quick question: Whenever I install software, whenever I get the option to "instal for current user only" or "all users" I always choose current only - but that shouldn't matter should it... just make shortcuts in my new admin start menu? There's no other problem be it access or compatability, right?

Correct. Doing that creates shortcuts of the program in the Start Menu for only the current user instead of all users. You would just need to manually create or copy over the shortcuts to your new administrator account to have them in it.
​

I'll first rename my original nonworking account allend66 --> allend66-old then my new account allend66-new --> allend66. This shouldn't cause problems with my synced backups c:\users\allend66 --> X:\ (truecrypt my documents container)?

If you mean renaming your user profile folder, then it may cause an issue with the encryption key for that account. I don't have any experience with truecrypt, but you may be better off creating a new synced backup in the new account.
​

 

[allend66]

Solid advice, thanks to all. I'll be copying things over and testing so I'll need a little time before I post back.

Regards!
D

 

[allend66]

Well: <sigh..> with the new account and start menu shortcuts, a few programs didn't work - they either had to be reinstalled for this account (eg. Roboform) or weren't activated/registered (eg. MediaMonkey).

I then tried copying *.* from C:\Users\<old> --> C:\Users\<new>.
Windows Explorer wanted elevated priveleges to copy some things which I accepted, but it just hung. I canceled after 5 minutes.

I then tried a workaround with elevated CMD using xcopy /t /e /h. Didn't work. Solved it by using elevated Goodsync with a new backup (hidden & system files included by default). Then I switched to the new account and took ownership of the newly backedup <username> which was set to SYSTEM. All good so far..

It was then that I saw the same problem happening: my right click -> Send To menu empty. In disbelief I froze in horror and deep thought. Then after 5 seconds of mouse pointer hovering on the empty space it filled in as it should. I switched back to old account and did the same thing - paused with mouse pointer over the empty field, and it does fill in but after like 5 seconds (which is a looooong time). I had never hovered my pointer over the empty space for this long before.

So now the question: Why does it take so long to populate? -Is it because I have networked shortcuts? But even so, 5 seconds is a long time, this is a new pc for goodness sake... it has 75% of C: drive empty, it's defragged, it's clean, and with 4Gb of RAM there is usually more than 1Gb unused in system resources. So what's going on?

With this in mind I might now delete the new account and try another fix. Or just accept that that's the way it is.
Any ideas?

 

[Brink]

Allend,

I just had a thought. Do you have your HDD's set to turn off after X amount of minutes of being idle? If so, that would cause a small delay before "Send To" would populate while it's waiting on the HDDs to spin back up if they were off when you clicked on "Send To".

If so, you could either have the HDDs not turn off as above, or remove the HDDs from the "Send To" context menu so you can still let them turn off without the delay in the "Send To" menu.

 

[SIW2]

Is it only the send to - or is the rt click context menu slow ?

 

[allend66]

Shawn - you're a genius! That's it - I have links in Send To to 2 portable drives on my remote laptop, and yes the hard disks spin down after 10 minutes. Good lord - can't believe I missed that. +1.

SIW2 - No, no just send to. All else ok.

Thanks for the input people, kudos.
D