After A While No Icons In Explorer And Right-click Hangs Window
Sep 17, 2012
I use 8 Pro Build 9200. When I boot, everything is normal. Then, after a while, usually a dozen minutes, whenever I open a folder in Explorer, no file icons will be shown, whatever the file type : I only get a blank generic rectangle instead of the proprer icon.
When this happens, I can be totally sure that any right-clicking on a file or a folder will result in the windows hanging indefinately. The only way out of this is to end the task through Task Manager.
The layout and folder options become unavailable as well.
I use 8 Pro Build 9200. When I boot, everything is normal. Then, after a while, usually a dozen minutes, whenever I open a folder in Explorer, no file icons will be shown, whatever the file type : I only get a blank generic rectangle instead of the proprer icon.
When this happens, I can be totally sure that any right-clicking on a file or a folder will result in the windows hanging indefinately. The only way out of this is to end the task through Task Manager.
The layout and folder options become unavailable as well.
I have Windows 8 pro + WMC 64-Bit installed on a laptop .. I have noticed sometimes when I right-click a file it just hangs with the circle spinning forever - I have to terminate explorer.exe and restart it - when i do all icons are blank - after a couple of attempts all shortcuts and favourites normally in left panel are gone
rebooting fixes it for a while - I dunno why but ive a sneaky feeling SLEEP plays a part, (due to past experiences too in other windows os's) ive noticed it really seems too happen if the laptop has been too sleep, ive noticed in past that problems seem to occur when one uses sleep or hibernate, its like the system becomes unstable? - i could be wrong, just I use sleep cos the power button is gone.
I want to Simple App/Software Mouse Click to Simulate Mouse Click on a button in A Window.
The Window is and the button is Connect. I want to simulate the click when ever the button text is connect other wise no click is made. Is there any app/software/script to my need ?
This started happening just recently & I think it was after a Windows update.
Every time I want to copy or move a file using the select location link, the copy/move window that opens is always below the task bar (or below the screen if I have task bar set to auto hide). In either case I cannot click the move or copy button before first moving the window up. It may seem like a small thing but I do this operation a lot & it is very annoying having to do that extra step.
So I have limited experience in computers. I recently had to download some images for a class and after I did so I noticed that I could no longer right click on any icons or folders without my mouse pointer turning into an hour glass, then my screen going black and restarting.
I've done virus and mal-ware scans and everything came back in the clear. I'm running windows 8 or 8.1 also.
I have bought several games on steam and it have always worked just fine. But I recently copied the shortcuts to the Games window and now something has gone wrong. It is the Steam shortcuts that I have copied and it seems like the Games window doesn't like Steams shortcuts. Now I have several games that I have bought on steam in my Games window and I can't run them from there and I can't delete them either. I can play them using a shortcut from the exe-file.
Nothing happens when try to run the icons in the games window and when I right-clicking on the icons no menu appears, I have runned the Ccleaner to fix the registry but it hasn't worked and a the error sound plays when I mark the icon and press delete and I have tried to use the shift+delete combination.
How do I get Steams shortcuts to work with my Games windows and how do I remove the icons that I can't use??
This problem happens to me right after the installation of Stardock's Start8 or another app called StartIsBack. It could be those 2 apps or it could be something else I don't know.
The problem is, after a reboot, all of a sudden, the icons lose their image and they just become blank white files, if I right click on a file for example to Run As Administrator or anything else, the whole context menu doesn't appear and Explorer just freezes until I force restart
This happened to me in 8 diff. formats / fresh install I finally gave up and just reverted back to Windows 7. Could it be those start menu replacement apps or perhaps some dodgy windows updates?
In File Explorer the preview window box is checked and thumbnails box is checked, but I can only preview image files. Word or Pdf files do not show up. I did a factory setting reinstall of Windows 8.1. My word documents showed up in the preview window prior to the reinstall, but not my pdf files. I use this feature frequently.
Windows 8.1 x 64bit CPU Intel(R) Pentium(R) CPU J2850 @ 2.41GHz (4 Cores) Graphics Card Intel(R) HD Graphics - 24MB Free Video RAM, 32MB Total physical memory 4GB
I often have 3,4,5 sessions of File Explore open at once. [old habit] I can use the keyboard to copy/paste, etc with no problem. But if I use the right mouse click to "copy" or check Properties, or anything else, file explorer freezes for a few seconds, then closes. In fact it closes all sessions and shows the default Windows screen [as if just booting up] and finally all the icons reappear. It takes about 15 seconds for the screen to return to normal.
Replacement mouse does the same. Right click works perfectly inside a file, like to copy text, etc, and inside every other program. Only in File Explorer does it totally crash, no matter if only one open or many.
Recently I've started having this problem where if I right-click anywhere in File Explorer, no matter what folder, my cursor switches to loading, then the folder goes to (Not Responding), and I have to close it out which causes Windows Explorer to disappear for a few seconds.
I've been dabbling with Windows 8.1 a little bit, and noticed something missing from it--at least, it's missing on my computer. I'd like to know if I am the only person experiencing this.
The problem is quite simple: The right-click menu for the Explorer taskbar icon has disappeared, and it doesn't let me close my open Explorer windows.
I have desktop shortcut icons for the C drive, and two external drives. Also, I have a shortcut icon for my USB flash drive, which I usually keep plugged in for backup.
I can have several Explorer windows open by clicking these icons. They appear stacked in the taskbar. (See diagram below.) If I have only one Explorer window open, the menu will have a Close Window option. If two or more windows are open, it will say Close All Windows.
This menu, and these options, seem to have disappeared with Windows 8.1 Preview.
Windows Explorer as well as other desktop programs failed to respond to a right click from any interface. I was also having printer errors that involved total failure to print. At first, I thought I needed to uninstall all my Epson software and printer, but that resulted in no change. This was likely a Context Menu Handler problem. It suggested downloading a Shell File Extensions View (ShellExView - Shell Extension Manager For Windows) from NirSoft version 1.8.6.0 which was free.
The first download I did not use out of fear so I accessed the Context Menu area via regedit, but saw no way to disable any suspected third party Context Menu Handlers. So, in the end, I swallowed hard and ran the NirSoft application. I was able to see all the shell items in the registry, and sorted them by age, the most recent was a Context Menu Handler from Norton Internet Security occurring during the most recent update.
The manager software allowed me to disable just that one handler, and after a restart, File Explorer and everything else behaved normally. So, now I am posting this so it only takes you less than an hour to address this issue, where I spent 4-5 hours on it. I reinstalled the Norton Internet Security and all is still well.
When I right click in the downloads folder or try to open the Recycle Bin Explorer freezes and the blue circle appears unless I force quit the application. It only seems to happen in these two folders.
I downloaded Shell Extensions Manager and disabled all the applications not created by Microsoft and the problem still exists.
The one solution I did find was to create a new user and then the issue was resolved.
About since I installed jdownloader this afternoon (and afterwards removed "search protect" with AdwCleaner and Malwarebyte Anti-Malware), my Windows explorer regularly freezes.
It does so whenever I do a right-click on any folder or disk or on the free space inside a folder or disk. It also crashes whenever I open folder, which I have not recently opened or to which I added a big file (bigger than about 1 MB) recently. I could open some folders since this error came up but after adding a file to them, this is not possible anymore. Windows explorer being able to open some folders is probably due to it cashing/indexing some information. I can read everything using cmd (cd & dir) and execute files directly though.
In safe mode Windows explorer works fine.
What I did so far: - Following this guide (Right-click is slow or weird behavior caused by context menu handlers) I removed all the handlers in the registry in HKCRAllFileSystemObjectsshellexcontextmenuhandlers, HKCRFoldershellexcontextmenuhandlers and HKCRDirectoryshellexcontextmenuhandlers. Deletion of one handle in HKCRDirectoryshellexcontextmenuhandlers called "WorkFolders" only produces an error. I therefore could not delete this one. It did not work. Afterwards I recovered the registry keys.
- I used system recovery to switch back to a state from the day before yesterday. - I tried disabling all the files in auto-start using the task-manager with no improvement. - I ran "sfc /scannow", which told me there were some files it was unable to repair. I digged into the log and found the file sfc talked about. The file was completely missing. I got a copy from my notebook and managed to copy that file into the folder. But it didn't work.
What's more, I could not rerun sfc to see if the sfc-error persisted, because my computer froze during login after the restart (during which I also installed some minor Windows updates) and I had to force a restart. This brought up a bluescreen on the first two following restarts. On the third one, recovery came up and I chose automatic repair. After that the system could start again, but "sfc /scannow" now throws an error saying "There is a system repair pending which requires reboot to complete. Restart ...". I tried running "dims.exe /image:C: /cleanup-image /revertpendingactions" in the recovery console, which threw an error saying that it was unable to complete. I also tried rerunning the startup repair, which told me it was unsuccessful. sfc is still not running.
Additionally, and I think this started at about the same time, Avira cannot start its real-time protection anymore. I don't get any useful information out of it, just that it encountered some error. I reinstalled it twice, to no avail.
Using windows 8.1. Every time i right click on a file or a folder explorer just crash an restart. I have googled around and found a lot of people have this problem with autodesk inverter 2013, but I don't have it. Its quite annoying.
When I click on empty space, everything is fine. When I select multiple files or folders, i CAN right click on them.
I'm trying to find a way to make icons of images in Explorer larger than the "extra large" option. I don't see the slider in Win 8 Explorer to do that. Is there something else that could be done to size the icons to what I want them to be?
I am running Win 8.1 upgraded from 8. Every now and then all the icons on my taskbar start to disappear and it loses all functionality I can not click the start menu button or right click the taskbar.
I have to restart the process to get them back which doesn't worry me that much as I have written a program that makes it 2 clicks to restart it.
My desktop icons are still fine and my desktop wallpaper slide show still works, also I don't see anything regarding this in my event logs.
Current Setup/programs that affected this issue: RDP Stardock Fences 2 Super Street Fighter 4 Arcade Edition
Basically I RDPed into my home PC, tried to play some Street Fighter 4. Things worked, all was happy, and the Gods rejoiced. Until I returned home. Upon trying to log into my PC the desktop showed only partially complete (by this I mean the icons were there but they were in the process of moving to the "fence"). Explorer gave me the wonderful wait symbol and I could not interact with my PC. Fast forward 10-15 minutes, still no change. CTRL-ALT-DELETE worked kind of: it opened up after a few moments/minutes. From there I rebooted thinking that would fix it. Nope.
Eventually I got into the cycle where the desktop would load, fences would load, explorer would lock up, I'd click my mouse, explorer would crash and restart. I uninstalled fences, everything worked... except the icons. Reinstalled fences, same problem as before, crashing and whatnot. Uninstalled it again. And that's where I'm at currently.
I've attached a couple images, the first one shows the current state of the icons. Some have their icons, some don't. All are valid shortcuts. I'm a bad person and I have actual programs on my desktop and even those have the generic white page icon.
The second screenshot shows the file in its directory, with properties and change icon. No matter how many times I do that, nothing will change.
I've spent a couple hours googling and my first thought was it was the icon cache so I decided to nuke it (I found some instructions on these sites with copy/paste commands, it was so easy even a cave man could do it).
So I'm currently frustrated beyond all belief at my PC on a night when I just wanted to come home, watch some movies and play a couple games after an annoying day at work. Instead I spent all evening trying to fix this problem and getting no where. Woe is me?
I should add without Fences (and I removed all my other customization stuff and nuked anything that integrated with the right click shell thingy which I can't remember what it's called) my machine is running nice and smoothly (so far) aside from the icons.
The icon images on the app screen are specific to the website they link to, but when I pin them to the Start menu, many of them become the generic "e" for explorer icons. They do retain the name of the website, which is okay, but if I change the size to "small", I am left with a bunch of similar-looking icons.
I am trying to be able to see CR2 files (RAW photo files from Canon) as thumbnail icons in Windows Explorer. I am using Windows 8.
Microsoft's codec pack (Download: Microsoft Camera Codec Pack - Microsoft Download Center - Download Details) does not work for Windows 8. When I am trying to install it, I get an error message mentioning that I can use Windows 8 Update function, but doesn't give any more information on how to do this exactly.
I have a new Dell Inspiron 15r as of this Christmas, running Windows 8. I ran the upgrade to 8.1 but I still have a problem with my cursor wanting to "hover click" on links or browser tabs, as well as being stuck in the down position, when I'm not even pressing on the touchpad left button. I end up selecting an entire region of stuff while moving the cursor across the screen.
I can't figure out what to change or configure in Control Panel, or is it in the Dell Touchpad configuration utility?
In Control Panel/Ease of Access Center/Make Your Mouse Easier To Use I have unchecked "Activate a Window by hovering over it with a mouse." Still happens.
I have a Windows 8 machine with Windows 8.1 upgrade.
On my operations such as restarting and shutting down it hangs and does nothing (I understand this a common problem but I have tried 3 solutions I found on the internet and none of them worked.) I still have to turn off my computor by holding the power button......
It isn't just shutting down however. Often when I try to open a program I have downloaded from the internet (the latest example being a driver scanner) nothing happens.
To try and fix these issues, I attempted to refresh Windows 8. Again it did nothing. After clicking the Get Started button it just hung on Preparing. I only left it for about 20 minutes, I thought something would have happened by then. The same is true for reinstalling Windows.
Sometimes Windows 8 just hangs after I look around and change some of the DVD related settings in VirtualBox. My host system is ubuntu and the guest is Windows 8.
When it hangs it is usually showing the Windows 7 desktop because I am always in that mode. I cursor to the lower left to try to the the mini-tiles but no matter what I do with the cursor, the mini-tiles do not appear. In fact, nothing works. I cannot launch any desktop applications.
In the past I solved this by simply having VirtualBox send the shutdown power-off signal. Windows is ignoring the shutdown signal. Is there a Windows-centric way to fix this problem so that I can do a Windows-centric shutdown in the normal fashion or otherwise resolve or prevent this problem?
The short story: I've got two Windows 8's on a machine: one OEM and one retail Pro which I just installed. The light-blue "OS Selector" screen which it boots to will hang after about 10 seconds. Within those 10 seconds, I can click to boot the OEM Windows 8, and it will boot fine. If I select the new retail Pro, it'll start booting that and then hang.
The longer story: I've got a Samsung Chronos7 laptop which has an OEM Windows 8 installed on it. For reasons which I won't go into, I got it into a strange state such that I can't use it for development work. So, I decided to install a fresh Windows 8 Pro retail next to the existing OEM version.
The install went fine. I could boot into the new Windows 8, and I started installing my development tools, mail client, Dropbox, etc. etc... and installed about Windows 48 updates (and I noticed that a few items in Device Manager which had, when I first looked, were unidentified, had disappeared from "Unidentified Hardware" and, presumably, were in their proper categories and without yellow problem flags).
Then, when I rebooted, I got the light-blue OS selector screen where I got to choose between the two Windows 8's (and then I heard an interesting "thump" from the speakers)... and the 30-second timer started counting down... until it got to 20 seconds, and then the machine just locked up. No mouse cursor movement, no hard-drive activity... nothing. Every time I boot it, it does that same thing: Thump from the speakers, clock ticks down to about 20 seconds, and then hangs.
Now, within those 10 seconds, I can click on either of the Windows 8 icons and get them booting. If I click on the OEM one, it'll launch fine (but it's still unusable for my development work, mind you). If I click on the new retail one, then it will hang at the little circling dots. If I start launching the new Windows 8 before the "speaker thump", I'll still hear it while Windows 8 is launching (before it hangs).
So... I'm figuring that something about the stock Windows 8 drivers is different from the OEM-packaged drivers, or something about the Windows updates on the new version has altered the boot loader, of all things. But now I'm kinda stuck, because I can't figure out how to boot into any sort of "Safe Mode" in the new Windows 8 install (I tried pressing F8 at just about every step of the boot process), so I'm not sure how I'm supposed to disable any hardware or roll back some drivers or restore to a previous restore point.
(Hanging at the light-blue OS selector) before? Is there a way for me to, perhaps, replace the Windows 8 boot files in the EFI System Partition with the "working" ones from the OEM install?At what point of the boot process am I supposed to be able to switch to Safe Mode?Is there a way to roll back driver or restore to a restore point if I have a Windows 8 Recovery CD or USB?
When I turn the power on, my desktop PC (a Hewlett-Packard) goes into a BIOS startup routine that says "Preparing Automatic Repair" and then "Diagnosing Your PC" which has to finish before it will load Windows or any OS. I've seen it before, and usually it just takes a few seconds. But now it's stopping at the "Diagnosing" message and won't go any further. I turn it off and on, and it does the same thing again. I can get into the BIOS menus and choose other options like booting from another drive, recovery options, etc. but no matter what I choose it starts the BIOS over again and gets hung up on the "Diagnosing" step, so I can't boot ANYTHING.
Any way to bypass or break out of this BIOS startup loop so I can get to Windows?
