Context Menu has lost and gained entries

Hi all,

I am pretty annoyed. About three programs recently installed have all staked their claim to my right-click context menu when I am in Windows Explorer and I wouldn't be so crabby if they hadn't replaced things I use.

The menu should read something like:

New

• Folder
• Shortcut
• (Dividing Line)
• Briefcase
• Bitmap image
• Rich Text Document
• Text File
• Word Document
• Wave Sound

Mine now reads:

• Folder
• Shortcut
• (Dividing Line)
• Explorer Document (Wrong icon and name but it gives me a briefcase called "New Explorer document")
• Bitmap Image
• WordPad Document
• Sibelius score
• Snapshot File (default icon for unknown programs and don't know what it is but the extension is .SNP)
• Wave Sound

I would love to get this back to normal - I use the Notepad shortcut so often that it's driving me nuts having to keep opening NotePad from a shortcut and then using "Save" and navigating to the right place to save my new text file.

If all goes well, I'll have attached a picture to show you exactly what I mean.

This problem seems to have started somewhere around the time Sibelius was installed and it didn't take my NotePad shortcut at that stage but some other later program seems to have done.

Although we have had one or two strange things happening lately, they all appear to be Windows doing strange things rather than any likelihood of viruses or anything else like that. One such peculiar thing is that "My Documents" insists on turning up at the bottom of the list in Windows Explorer unless I have the desktop shortcut showing when it happily moves to the top of the list.

I also have a stupid problem at the moment where everytime I open a dialog box to save files, the files are sorted in date order and as a list instead of alphabetically sorted Details. This one I think will disappear when I restart the computer.

Also, a problem that has emerged lately and I can't seem to get rid of is that everytime I move to another folder in Explorer, the display is the same as the one I just left, even though I have "Remember each folder's settings" unchecked and supposedly every folder showing Details in alphabetical order. So for example, if I am looking at some photos I've taken and choose to view thumbnails, and then I want to find a text file in another folder, the folder I move to will all be showing thumbnails instead of the Details view. This didn't used to happen and I wish it would stop. I've tried a few times to reset these settings in Folder Options and also tried restarts and nothing works.

We're running Windows 2000 and plenty of security software. I am assuming, especially since they have emerged at different times, that these problems aren't related but I've detailed them in case they may be related.

Thanks in advance!

P.S. With specific instructions on doing so, I can edit the registry. I don't understand the thing properly but I can safely delete, add and edit it.

 

Well, I've been looking around and found that using scannow often puts problems right but it hasn't done it in this case - anyone out there able to point me in the right direction? I've been poking around in the registry and found a bit more information but I won't post it at the moment because it's probably unnecessary for people who understand the registry well and I'm assuming we're going to be trying to put the registry back to normal.

Anyone out there with answers??