Right Click Menu Extension in Windows XP

Topics in this article:

Introduction

Registry entries

Introduction

When you right click your mouse in Windows Explorer or Internet Explorer a context sensitive menu pops up. It can be customised by software installations, left over after uninstall and unintentionally hijacked. The menu is different in Explorer and IE and may vary depending on where you right click from and what you right click on.

You can remove entries you don't want by manually deleting the registry keys. There are quite a few and except IE almost all are in the Class Root (HKCR) hive. It is possible to search in regedit using the item words but it is quicker if you know where to find them. The HijackThis tool (discussed in my articles on IE hijack) will also pick these up.

Registry entries

Internet Explorer

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\
Internet Explorer\MenuExt

I've not seen any entries in the HKLM key (similar subkeys; absent by default) but increasingly hijack objects write to this key as well so it would be well worth checking this too.

Windows Explorer

They are almost all under HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT (abbreviated as HKCR below) and there may be more subkeys under each key. Manually go through them and delete any unwanted entries. Be careful not to remove any entries which are used by Windows by default. If you're not sure, make a system restore point and back up the registry key first.

HKCR\*\OpenWithList
HKCR\*\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers
HKCR\Directory\shell
HKCR\Directory\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers
HKCR\Drive\shell
HKCR\Drive\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers
HKCR\Folder\shell
HKCR\Folder\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\
CurrentVersion\Explorer\FileExts\
 

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Copyright © 2004 by Kilian. All my articles including graphics are provided "as is" without warranties of any kind. I hereby disclaim all warranties with regard to the information provided. In no event shall I be liable for any damage of any kind whatsoever resulting from the information. The articles are provided in good faith and after some degree of verification but they may contain technical or typographical errors. Links to other web resources may be changed at any time and are beyond the control of the author. Articles may be added, removed, edited or improved at any time. No support is provided by the author.

This is not an official support page for any products mentioned. All the products mentioned are trademarks of their companies. Edit the registry at your own risk and back up first.

Created 10 Feb 2004; last updated 24 Aug 2004