Resolved Start Menu appears but doesn't respond

On my PC named Tigger the start menu 8/10 times does not repond, possible relevant points are:-
- clicking on the start button always makes the start menu appear, but 8/10 times the menu items do not respond to the mouse passing over & will not expand or respond in any way.
- once the "frozen" start menu appears, no part of the task bar will do anything, but a right click on either the desktop or the currently open window always responds by closing the start menu. Ctrl+alt+del will still work,
- it happend with either the default XP start menu or with the classic start menu,
- it is not start-up related and can happen either 10 min or 10 hours after startup,
- XP Pro 32bit + SP3 was installed only last December,
- it is possible to navigate throut the start menu directories with Explorer that are inside My documents, the structures in profiles "all users" and profile "tigger" look OK.
- I have tried chkdsk /r & sfc /scannow & done a full virus & spyware scan but no change.

Is there an obvious known problem here that someone could point out to me , or is it a case of "format c:" ?

 

When it happens, look the HDD LED, is it running hard?

Open Ctrl+Alt+Del (Task Manager) and look at the CPU usage (bottom left corner and you can see individual usage under the Processes tab).

Check Page File Usage History and Physical Memory under the Performance tab. Compare it when all HDD activity has stopped after reboot to other times when it is good and bad. Do you have a decent amount of RAM for the programs you want to run and all the programs that want to run in the background?

It could be malware or a badly written program running in the background. If you think it is something running in the background, try running StartupCPL
http://www.mlin.net/StartupCPL.shtml.
You can run online antimalware scans or post a thread in our Virus and Malware Removal forum, but follow the instructions at the head of the forum "*** READ THIS BEFORE POSTING IN THIS FORUM *** ".

Try your best to discover what is causing it, you might go to the trouble of reformatting and (maybe not immediately) it starts happening again.

Matt
PS Do you have plenty of free space on your Windows drive/partition?

 

This got the start menu working again, now I just have to narrow down which item is causing the problems.

I'll be back...............

 

During the start menu freeze:-
- CPU usage remains minimal,
- Page file usage is at about 750MB (of a fixed 4GB),
- I have 58GB of 80GB free on C: (Intel 34nm SSD)
- Pysical Memory, Total=3668396K, Available = 2193700, so I reckon there is enough,
- I used StartCPL to disable all non-essential start up programs - LOCK UP DISSAPEARED Then I re-enabled them all and the problem stayed dissapreared, hmmmm

I now have a new problem - although the start menu will work, it is impossible to right click on any menu item (left click = OK, right click = ignored).

I think the next test will be to create a spare profile and see if it is "corrupt profile" related, if that is even possible?

I'm not worried about having to re-install everything, but I agree that a repeat of this setup could cause a repeat of this problem.

 

A third-party program may have modified the Context Menu (tried to add a customised entry). For example, in the Context Menu of my "files ", 7 Zip and AVG have added entries.

Does it happen in My Computer or if you say, right-click on a desktop icon?

Here is information
http://windowsxp.mvps.org/context_folders.htm
and see his related article
Right-click is slow or weird behavior caused by context menu handlers

Matt

 

Matt,

Once I realised that it was only right clicks in the start menu that were causing problems I investigated the possibility of a corrupt profile rather that an errant program.

You are a star, thanks for your help.

To sort my problem I had to copy the profile information over to a new spare profile, delete then re-create the profile that was causing problems, then copy the profile information back to the re-created profile.

Thanks for pointing out StartCPL and ShellMenuView, these have already been of fantastic help.

 

Ah, very good! I wouldn't have thought it was a corrupted profile.Thanks for letting us know how you did it.

 

I'm grateful for the help given to me - just trying to give a little back in case it helps others.