Problem with "Right-Click" Menu

When I right click on a file in windows explorer, the context menu does not appear. I see the frame of the menu, but that's all.

Same thing in IE8- if I right click on a link, I don't get the menu - only the frame of the menu.

I'm lost as to why this is happening. I don't think I've made any changes to my computer recently - running windows XP Pro.

Any thoughts on this?

Thanks,
Len

 

Purely guesses at this point, but my first 3 would be graphics driver, system file corruption, or registry corruption. Try to update your graphics driver. If a newer one is not available try to reinstall the current one. Also open a command prompt and run "sfc /scannow" to run the system file checker. Could possibly be a corrupt shell extension. If the previous suggestions don't work you could try to uninstall anything that adds a shell extension to windows explorer, things such as winzip, winrar, etc. but not as likely since it also happens in IE.

 

Well this is interesting. Based on Stapp's and xxJackxx's advice, I did the following:

- I confirmed that drag and drop is enabled.

- There are 2 user accounts with admin rights (mine and another). I logged on using the other account and right-clicking worked fine.

- I booted up in safe mode (my account) and right-clicking worked fine.

Here' the interesting part...

- I booted up in normal mode in my account and everything is now working fine. I have no idea why - but I'm not complaining. I just hope it stays fixed.

If anyone has any insight as to what's going on, I'd love to here it.

Thanks to Stapp and xxJackxx.

Len

P.S. I also ran the SFC program. I think the results were normal - there were no messages in the cmd window and I couldn't find a logfile using eventviewer.

 

If SFC didn't find any integrity violations then you are fine on that. Logging in to another account probably reset something that wasn't quite right.

 

It's onerous work, but you can usually figure it out using this procedure:

Context Menu Repair

 

There's always Microsoft Answers for full support.

 

The problem never recurred after I stumbled on the original fix

 

Good to know you were able to rectify your problem. Would you care to share what your original fix was ? Perhaps some of this would help.

Regards,

 

Siljaline -

See post #4. Problem self-corrected.

Len

 

This is good to know, Len.
If the problem reoccurs, you have your other options open to you.