NirSoft ShellExView Pinpoints Explorer Context Menu Problems
OK then, I got back from 8 days in the Washington, DC, area on Saturday (January 5). Upon inspecting my production PC I was stunned to see a series of 17 BEX64/CompatTelRunner.exe application faults. Normally, when I leave the machine alone, it runs at a steady “10” Reliability Index. That’s because I’m not messing around with things constantly, as is my usual practice when working on that PC. I wrote a post here on November 8 about this very kind of thing. It’s entitled “Debugging Win10 Explorer Crashes,” and prescribes looking at the most recently installed context menu items to identify the culprit. NirSoft ShellExView pinpoints Explorer context menu problems quite nicely. Here’s what the program showed me about recent shell extension items.
Of the four newest items only one says “Context menu.” Seems pretty obvious, eh?
[Click image for full-sized view.]
When NirSoft ShellExView Pinpoints Explorer Context Menu Problems, Then What?
Troubleshooting Context Menu shell extensions can be difficult when there are lots of potential culprits to deal with. In such cases, one must disable them one at a time, and see which one makes the crashing stop. In this particular case, fortune smiled upon me. There was only one Context Menu item in the batch of new items (all dated Christmas Eve, ironically enough). And indeed, disabling that shell extension seems to have stopped the crashing. My Reliability Index has been steadily climbing since late in the evening of December 4, when my “WTF” moment immediately led to disabling the otherwise excellent 8GadgetPack’s Content Menu extension as shown above.
Windows 10 has its foibles, to be sure. Sometimes, fixing them can be an ordeal. This time, luck prevailed and it was a snap! May it be likewise for you, so you can do as I did with the same good effects.