TC hangs when using right mouse button on drive root

[Dr. Snuggles]

Dr. Snuggles,
Hopefully you can find the misbehaving shell extension.

Roman

Hi Roman,

I give up!
I have not enough time to searching for bad shell-extensions with 3rd.-Party-Tools.
My wish for the future: Please let TC handles the shell-extensions equal to the explorer!

Greetings,
DS

[sqa_wizard]

Please let TC handles the shell-extensions equal to the explorer!

TC cannot handle shell-extensions like explorer, because TC is (gratefully) not a MS product !
The shell extensions are bad coded and will crash.
So it is up to them to get fixed.

Once the author of such buggy shell extensions gets aware of this bug, it is often fixed with the next release.
This means: If YOU want it to be fixed, YOU have to spend the time to search the bad shell-extensions and notify the author.

[Grego]

Just upgraded from Vista to 7 and TC went from perfectly working to the same problem behavior as described in this thread, with TC hanging when right clicking. Exactly the same software in 7 as in Vista. All other software works without problems. Complete reinstall of TC did not help.

This is not a user problem or "other software problem". This is a TC problem.

[HolgerK]

This is not a user problem or "other software problem". This is a TC problem.

Interesting opinion.
Even if this would be a TC-only problem (which could be fixed in TC), nobody seems to be willing to add some information which ShellExtension (installed by a 32Bit program) is causing the problem in combination with TC.

Regards
Holger

BTW: I can't reproduce your problem here: TC7.50a, Windows 7 Ultimate x64.

[sqa_wizard]

2Grego: Cannot reproduce either (TC7.50a, Windows 7 Ultimate x32)

[ghisler(Author)]

2Grego
Not all shell extensions are compatible with Windows 7, so your only chance to fix it is ShellExView.

[Grego]

I am not a programmer and have full respect that the problem might be difficult to find or identify, and I do not have the knowledge to investigate what is causing the problem and/or how to reproduce it. What I know is that all other software I have installed, including other file managers like Explorer, Q-Dir and Free Commander, have no problems with the right clicking whatsoever so my conclusion became that there is a problem with TC. Maybe a way to go is to make TC handle the Shell-Extensions like all (or most) other programs do.

Br

[ghisler(Author)]

There is just one function to load the context menu, and TC is calling it (IShellFolder->QueryContextMenu). It's really not difficult to use ShellExView, just try it! You can list the installed context menu extensions here, maybe I can tell you directly which one is causing you troubles (there are some well known problematic extensions).

[Grego]

OK, did the job and found the program causing the problem, it was Quick PDF Tools 1.4.0.0. Version 1.4.2.3 seems to work (or it could also have been the fact that I uninstalled and reinstalled Quick PDF Tools). One question is however still open for me, if TC is just doing what all other programs are doing, i.e. calling IShellFolder->QueryContextMenu, why did none of the other software I have installed (including the other File Managers) have a problem with right klicking? BR

[Dr. Snuggles]

There is just one function to load the context menu, and TC is calling it (IShellFolder->QueryContextMenu). It's really not difficult to use ShellExView, just try it! You can list the installed context menu extensions here, maybe I can tell you directly which one is causing you troubles (there are some well known problematic extensions).

After Install VMWare Workstation (latest 7.01) --> I became the RightClick-Bug in TC. Uninstall of VMWare --> No Bug!
ShellExView shows me no Extensions from VMware.

I need both VMWare and TC to Work.

What can i do?

Greetings,
DS

[kobuki]

Interesting. I too, have VMWare 7.01 installed. Regardless, it should work when all other applications, including all 32 and 64-bit ones have no such problem. I'm a programmer too, and as a sad fact, to get something working for a customer, or just get a buggy API work, we often need to find and code workarounds to produce a working application. We know it could be fixed at the other end, but we can't always afford waiting for other parties (and in many occasions, it's not possible to get a fix at all).

[Dr. Snuggles]

On my testing-machine is only Win7pro_x64, VMWare 7.01 an TC installed.
No other Software!
Maybe VMWare don't like TC?

DS

[ghisler(Author)]

No problem with Vmware here, although not 7.01...

[Dr. Snuggles]

No problem with Vmware here, although not 7.01...

Are you running vmware in win7_x64?

I have tested again, the bug(?) is reproduceable.
After installing vmware TC hangs when i right clicking on drive d:
Shellexview is here not helpful.

I found a other workaround for me!

Vmware installs a dll called vmdkShellExt.dll in the vmware folder.
I renamed this dll to vmdkShellEx_.dll and restart my machine.
The bug in TC was gone and Vmware seems to work correctly without using vmdkShellExt.dll...

I think this can not be the finally solution but its working for me.

Greetings,
DS

[kobuki]

It is probably related to this certain version of VMWare. VMWare Workstation 7.01 does install a shell extension. It creates context menu entries for mounting virtual disk images. This is also backed by the fact that you've found the offending dll instance and renaming it helped. At least we have a suspect now.

BTW, this case questions the usefulness of ShellExView, since it doesn't even list the VMWare-installed extension. It's also a 32-bit extension since it shows only in the 32-bit context menu in TC.