Windows 8.1 right click issues

Hi there.

forgive the long post, please read it carefully as you'll have to make a decision.

I'm afraid there's no windows 8.a that i know of, it will be either 8(.0) or 8.1; both of these have a few editions: home (aka "basic" and "core"), pro, enterprise. finally tablets also can have Windows RT which is still windows 8 but for portable ARM devices. Additionally, there are 32 and 64 bit variants, makes your head spin doesn't it?.

You can check what version you're running by right-clicking on "my computer" and choosing "properties" or through the old Control Panel/System (i don't use metro/modern ui at all so i can't tell you whether it has a corresponding facility)

please, in future, could you always provide very specific version info when you ask for assistance? for the operating system, apps that are experiencing problems, and any other relevant apps/suites/likely culprits? otherwise we'll just have to ask you for that info.

the following is an example of what would be helpful:
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running windows 8.1 64-bit, all updates installed to date.
VLC 2.1.3
.....
.....

for instance saying "Libreoffice 4.x.x" is not enough.

It would be helpful if, before asking for help, you've made sure that you've installed all the available updates for your os through "Windows Update" if that is at all possible according to the issue that you're experiencing, and after having installed all the updates check whether your problem still persists. If your problem prevents you from doing this, then at least once the issue is solved, in future run windows update at least once a week to be sure your os is fully patched and protected. Setting updates to automatically download and install is by and large a good choice, but you also get optional packages that are not included in this and *might* solve a given problem.

also, checking the system logs might reveal information that could shed a light on an issue, you'll find these through the app known as the "Event Viewer"; you can google for specific help on reading them and filtering only warnings & errors as there's plenty of articles on this.
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If right-clicking is that slow, but otherwise the system is ok, IMHO it's more than likely that you're having issues with an explorer extension that's causing problems.

This utility will let you browse the installed extensions:

http/www.nirsoft.net/utils/shexview.html

it will also allow you to disable / re-enable them. i suggest you download it and start disabling extensions one at a time until you find that the right-click becomes responsive within a reasonable time.

you may have to run it as "administrator" according to your user type and security settings, certainly it would not hurt if you did. Look for non-microsoft items, disable one, log out, back in, try right-click. if the situation changes you've got the culprit, otherwise go to the next one. Make a note of those you disable, as you'll need to re-enable them after you've diagnosed the point of failure (if you actually want them, that is)

i doubt what you describe has any relation to your presentations troubles, however i have no experience of libreoffice, so no idea of whether it also installs explorer extensions, we'll see what happens.

When you say "Windows media play can not open any file", and earlier you mention a "vmplayer" are those typos and you mean the actual "windows media playER", Wmplayer.exe or a different app with a similar name? when did this app stop playing videos, eg: recently, after installing/uninstalling software or has it never played them?

i notice you have vlc installed, can your vlc play videos correctly? and having vlc, which normally plays anything why are you using the other player, does vlc also give you problems?

i'm concerned by the simultaneous presence of avast and an unspecified mcafee product, you don't have two antivirii running simultaneously have you?. please specify precisely what mcafee products you have installed and their versions, same with avast.

As an alternative to all of the above, there's possibly a quicker and easier way of fixing all your problems. *possibly*. i'm only giving you options here. You could make a backup of all your data, then either do

1) an os only refresh or
2) use the HP rescue media to restore the whole system to its factory state.

1) would result in loss of your installed apps but you get to keep your data (the backup is a necessary precaution, of course) while with 2) your system would be completely wiped and reinstalled as if newly bought (so you'd also lose your data, which you'll have to restore), in either case, you'll have to re-install the apps you need, this might be an excellent time to prune things you don't need and just take resources.

either option should take, say, max 1 hour altogether and with much less hassle to you, however most users are normally afraid of going through this in case anything went wrong or they get asked something they don't know how to reply. If you feel confident in doing this, and i assure you HP has made this a rather failproof handful of "OK/Confirm" affairs, then it's an option, however, you'd still have to be careful with the issue between avast and mcafee packages i mentioned earlier, as you can't run multiple antivirii - or better, you could, technically, install multiple packages, but then the system will have a myriad problems.

let us know how you'd like to proceed.

>> I do not have any extensions installed at all for IE or firefox. I do not have any intentions of using those yet haha. Have not found any good ones. haha

you misunderstand, i'm referring to the shell extensions for explorer, the file manager. they're file and property handlers and they run when you right-click on a file and/or select their properties. That's why we always look at them as the very first thing when right-click problems crop up. although one might be aware of those installed manually for a specific purpose, a large number of applications also silently install them. since you have 2 antivirii, at the very least you'll have those two installed so that each package can perform a "scan this file with xxx" type of action. but before you do that, please read the rest.

>> It is a typo.If you continue to read my entire post, you will see that every other time i mentioned the OS version, i used 8.1 haha. sorry. laptop keyboards are small

My apologies, i missed that.

>> Windows media player has NEVER played videos since the day i received the laptop.

then you're very likely simply missing the codecs, vlc plays them because it has its own set. if you want to verify that is indeed the problem, you can download the GSPOT app here:

http/www.headbands.com/gspot/

and point it at a video that windows media player refuses to play. it will tell you whether it has codecs to deal with both video and audio.

>> Mcafee Internet security 2014 comes preinstalled on the system. I am not a fan of mcafee so i installed avast alongside. However, i have done that many many many times on past pc builds for testing purposes and had no issues. However, this is windows 8.1 64 bit architecture and im not sure how it responds to that.

You might want to reconsider as it is the source of a great many problems, possibly including yours. if you don't trust my judgement on this, you're welcome to open a separate thread on this forum for this specific issue. Since you don't like mcafee, please uninstall it, reboot and try both the right-clicking and video playing through vlc to see if it becomes smoother since you may have one of the two set to scan all file types instead of only the infectable classics (this is an option offered by some packages and not by others, and it's something you'll have to check in avast in any case); once you have uninstalled mcafee and checked avast's settings on that score please report any changes; do this before you attempt anything else including disabling the shell extensions, as that may turn out to be unnecessary. When you do this, you should be aware that uninstalling a 2nd antivirus has a chance that of breaking the functionality of the first. that's no biggie, *if* that should happen simply reinstall avast over itself and run an update.

thank you for your clarification re: vmware, i am well versed with their products, between your problems with playing videos and the app name i simply did not know what you were referring to.

>> If worse comes to worse, ill just reformat and throw win 7 on but that will void my warenty. sigh. I have no problem going through recovery. I have built over 300 or so servers and builds so i am familiar with the process

of course i would not suggest you break warranty, especially since there's no need for that. you can simply roll back to factory settings with win8 on it, then uninstall mcafee and replace your data from backups. your laptop's hardware was clearly certified to run win8 so there's no need to place win7 on it.

about multiple antivirus packages, the symptoms vary from user to user according to their environment so it's unwise to be specific. they hook deeply into the system at a low level and inspect a great deal of its operations, so the effects range from the trivial - massive system slowdown/hangs, to the packages detecting each other as a virus and even complete inability to boot. searching google will provide you with articles on the subject and you can get a better idea of the practicals from the large number of posts by users requesting help.

if you are uncertain about a file and feel the need to get a second antivirus opinion, you could use virustotal here:

https/www.virustotal.com/

this site will pass a file you upload to it through 40 different antivirii and will present you a table with the results, so it's kinda unbeatable.

the inability to play cds does interest me, more on that later. i think you might be confusing an audio cd's .cda "files" with something else; .cda files are not music files at all, there's no music data in them so they're not an audio format like mp3s, flacs etc. an audio cd is not really meant to be observed through explorer, your seeing .cda files is simply the result of your requesting explorer to present to you an audio disk's contents as a windows filing system, but if you look at the file sizes you'll see they're all tiny, 1k if i remember correctly. what happens is that explorer reads the cd's table of contents and displays the various tracks to you as files as requested, however they're not files, they're "virtual shortcuts" to the actual tracks, in the sense that those .cda "files" or "virtual shortcuts" don't really exist on the disk, they're a fabrication of explorer and when you click on one, explorer starts your player at that track's position as if you had selected it directly on a real cd player's panel.

could you try something for me? fire up vlc, do a Media>Open disc, select "Audio CD" and your cd drive (with an audio cd in the drive, of course) and click "Play". will it play the songs when approached this way?

the behavior you mentioned re: adaware is also interesting, you could try uninstalling it and seeing if the right-click problems gets resolved, if so we've found the culprit, otherwise it's an easy reinstall. also, if adaware is responsible, it may be due to a botched installation, and uninstalling and then reinstalling it might fix things.

if this fails we can then discuss the shell extensions, ok?

did you check whether the package you intend to keep has a setting that makes it scan all file types?

if it doesn't, but it has a facility that lets you exclude file types (most do), then you could try excluding video files, say for instance, .avi, then once you ok it try playing an avi and see if you get smoother playback.

finally for tonight, could you check whether you're in power saving mode? do WINDOWS KEY+X, choose "power options", then see what scheme is active. if you are in "power saver" mode, then please select "high performance" and try playing a video file, see if you get a better experience.

The right clicking was taking so much time around 7 to 8 seconds in windows 8 or 8.1, this was the main question.
The answer is very simple and illogical but trust me it really works, i've done it myself and now my right click menu shows up in no time.

Just turn on your bluetooth on your laptop using windows 8 or 8.1 (go to change pc settings-->pc and devices-->bluetooth.
simple turn it on and then check, your right click will not take even 2 seconds.

Shafqi