AS hangs when trying to open drive context menu

[Kanopus]

I cannot open the drive context menu, neither in the drop down menu nor in the drive button bar. When I try it, the waiting cursor appears and AS hangs and must be killed via task manager. It affects internal and external hard drives, but not CD/DVD drives (no matter if a disc is inserted or not). I don't have a diskette drive, so I don't know the behaviour here. The curious thing is: After opening a CD/DVD menu, opening a menu for a hard drive also works until I restart AS - then the same problem occurs. The drive context menu in Windows Explorer works well for every drive.
I use the recent version 2.53b2 (German language) on Windows 7 Ultimate 64 Bit.

[Ether]

There's probably some faulty or misconfigured shell extension at the core of this issue. Look in the list of the installed shell extensions using Nir Sofer's ShExView (remember to use 32-bit version - AS is a 32-bit program) and post the listing here, preferably only non-Microsoft extensions, since they're most prone to this kind of behavior.

[Kanopus]

Thanks for reply, I attached the list of non-Microsoft extensions.

Edit: I just disabled the context menu handlers listed here with ShellExView, but without success.

[Jan Rysavy]

Could you please break such Salamander from another instance using menu Help > Task List and send me the generated bug report to jan.rysavy@altap.cz?

[Kanopus]

Unfortunately I can't break that instance. It is listed in the task list, but when I click "Terminate..." and confirm the dialog, nothing happens, and the hanging instance is still active.

[Jan Rysavy]

Did you try also the Break button?

[Kanopus]

Yes, there also nothing happens. If the first instance does not hang, both buttons work proper and the report is displayed.
I noticed now, that right click on drive C also works, and after that also for the other drives, same as for DVD drives as I mentioned above.
The other drives (D-G) are partitions, I have two physical disks installed as a RAID 0 volume, but as I mentioned, the problem also occurs on external drives connected via USB.
Edit: I forgot my old disks, also RAID 0, but not partioned, so it is one large drive I use for backups. The problem occurs also here.

[SelfMan]

If the break function does not work, try the ProcDump tool from SysInternals.

[Kanopus]

Ok, did it.
I just saw now that drive C and the DVD drives (the drives where the context menu opens) do not have a submenu "Add to Library" (hope that's the correct english label), all other have that. There are two related context menu handlers listed by ShellExView, but disabling them has no effect, the submenu is still there. Does it make sense to repeat it and reboot the system?

[Ether]

Does it make sense to repeat it and reboot the system?

I forgot to mention it. All shell extensions, including the disabled ones, remain loaded until logging off and on again (rebooting is one way to accomplish that).

[Kanopus]

Okay, but also after reboot the sub menu is still available.
After that, I disabled also the non-Microsoft context menu handlers again, and noticed that also after reboot the related context menus (WinRAR, Beyond Compare, ...) are still available. That's strange. I have only downloaded the 32 bit Version of ShellExtView as you pointed out, is it necessary to disable the entries with the 64 bit version, too?

I further noticed that after right clicking on a file, a folder or the empty space in a panel, opening a context menu on the affected drives also works. So the situation is at least: The context menu opens on files, folders, the panels, the system drive and DVD drives. Trying to open a context menu on all other drives let Salamander hang, except when I open one of the working menus first. That's not so wicked as it looked at the beginning, I just have to take in mind to open a functioning menu first.

[Ether]

After some testing on my 7x64, I saw that the 32-bit version is affecting native extensions rather than the 32-bit ones. I have apparently missed the "recent" changes (I last used ShExView on XP) and you need to run shexview.exe /wow64 to make relevant changes, and maybe even the reboot is not needed anymore (but I'm not sure about that). Cited from its homepage:

Added support for properly enabling/disabling shell extensions under Windows Vista. (The disabled shell extensions are added to 'HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Shell Extensions\Blocked' key in the Registry)

On x64 systems, ShellExView now always shows the shell extensions for x64 applications, even on the 32-bit version of ShellExView. If you want to get the shell extensions list for 32-bit applications, use ShellExView with /wow64 command-line option.

[Kanopus]

Great, got it!
It's a context menu handler named "VMDiskMenuHandler Class" (I have VMWare 7 installed). After disabling that, the menus open on all drives. Reboot was indeed not necessary.
Many thanks for your effort.