Context menu is slow to display

These problems can be trick, a little more info would help but here are some things to think of, #1, make sure that there are no dead links on the system ie: shortcuts that no longer exist on the network, these are sometimes over looked and can be areal pain.
#2 run a netstat -e from the command line of the computer and see if any packets are erroring out or being dropped, this would indicate a defective nic/driver or link, also you might want to force the link speed on the nic driver from auto to 10mbs just to see if it makes a difference. There are a couple of nic manufs. that have bad drives that corrupt packets and crank the error checking up to slow the system down. If this dosen't help re-post it and I'll pass on some more info!!! And you can always capture the traffic and see where it is going. Another route would be to look at her DNS settings etc, to make sure it's going to the most direct route, make a hosts file in the os directory with the server name and IP address and see if it speeds it up!!! Good Luck
Mike

Point value changed by question poster.

New Info:

This problem occurs wheter the computer (a Dell OptiPlex GX1) is physicaly connected to the network or not. Also, installing the hard drive in another computer does not change theslowness of the context menu, so it's nothing outside the HD in the computer. Finally, powering up the computer in another location in the building still results in the problem, so we're not dealing with electrical faults.

I have taken some more steps to resolve this issue and none have been successful. These steps include:

1)Defragmentation down to only eight fragmented files.
2) Install SP6a (running NT4.0)
3) Run CyberMedia Uninstaller to clean up bogus registry entries.
4) Virus scan

I have also determined that clicking on a file name and then clicking "File" from the menu bar produces the same behavior as right-clicking the file name. However, if I run winfile.exe (the old File Manager app) I can select a file and then click "File" and the menu comes up instally. So, it must be a 32-bit related problem but I still have not pinpointed it. Anybody have any ideas?

You probably have a dead context menu handler. I had same results from uninstalling an old version of winzip. It left the context menu handler key behind and then the ops system couldn't find the program and created an incredible lag.

Search for contextmenuhandler in Hkey_classes_root and look for entries for which there are no programs. BE VERY CAREFUL. Sometimes the context handler is a pointer to a clsid which you have to lookup. Most of the contextmenu entries are from the operating system. It should be very apparent that the entry is for winzip or corel versions or a document imaging program.

What you are looking for is probably attached to *, drive, or directory. It has a named key inside of a "contextmenuhandler" key. Carefully delete the named key

None of the context menus would be implemented by file manager. They are only part of the explorer interface.