Win XP Right Click Functions Lost

Now here's a strange one!!

I've had a look at some downloaded desktop themes today and in true style have managed to make a headache for myself!!

Normal Windows operations (if there are such things!) seem fine apart from one little problem. When I right click on the desktop or in a folder I used to get quite a healthy sized menu of options appearing (WinRAR, WinZIP, Norton options and the like).

When I right click now though I only get very limited options - right clicking on the desktop offers only 'Refresh', 'Paste', 'Paste shortcut' and 'Properties'. Clicking inside a folder is similar in that the 'New' command has gone completely. Man you don't know how much you use that command until its gone!!!

I've looked around on Google and seen lots of nearly but not quite the same problems. Namely that right clicking doesn't do anything or has a long pause until the menu appears. I believe, from looking around that the registry key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer

is the most likely cause of the problem but I'm at a loss to see what to do. On advice of some other forums I have inserted and added null values to "NoViewContextMenu" but to no avail.

I noticed that TweakXP offers a 'disable right click on desktop' function which I hoped by activating and then deactivating, I might be able to bump start my right click functionality but no good came from that either.

Any help anyone could offer would be greatly appreciated!!


Cheers




Nick

 

Well it looks like I'm answering my own post but I figure its worthwhile if someone else happens across this thread in the future when they're suffering the same problem!

Shortly after my original post I came across a web page that offered a reg file that added the 'new' command back into the right click menu.

Having run the file my right click menu looks much more like it used to!!

I've attached the file but I've changed the extension from .reg to .txt to make it a valid file to upload. If you download it just change the .txt to .reg. Obviously this is potentially dangerous (I could be any old juvenile hacking funster!!) so feel free to open the file in notepad or something first.

Hope this helps anyone who comes by this thread in the future


Nick

 

Hi,
it's great that you solved the problem but I'd still be worried about the cause. -Have you any idea what desktop theme caused the problem? -or why/how?
Yours,
522. (In grey SJ, New Brunswick).