Personal computing discussed

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CaptainCruise
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Mouse performance question

Wed Jan 30, 2013 6:02 pm

I'm having issues with my mouse performance when I right-click something. For example...say I want to rename a file or folder or delete something. I right-click on it and it takes several minutes before the box will open with the options I need. I've never had this happen before on any computer that I have owned or built. This specific one is a ASUS G74SX laptop with a i7-2670QM CPU and 12GB of RAM. The mouse is a Logitech Anywhere MX. I don't think the problem is the mouse itself, but a computer setting somewhere that is causing this.

If anyone has an idea on this, I'd appreciate the help. Thanks very much.
Tom "CC"
Whoever said "A bad day of fishing is better than a good day at work"..........
.............never caught anything.

~Cruise I
 
notfred
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Re: Mouse performance question

Wed Jan 30, 2013 7:31 pm

I vaguely remember something about missing mapped network drives causing slowdowns like this. Have you unplugged anything that had a mapped drive on it recently?
 
CaptainCruise
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Re: Mouse performance question

Thu Jan 31, 2013 1:33 am

Not that I know of. To be honest I'm kinda vague on exactly what "is" a mapped network drive?? Would a Flash USB be considered that? I have one that is plugged in constantly running ReadyBoost which is suppose to give a small performance kick. Maybe I'll unplug it just to see what happens.

I was just using my mom's laptop for a minute to try this, and there is no wait when I right-click something. I must have changed something by accident somewhere.


Thanks...
T
Whoever said "A bad day of fishing is better than a good day at work"..........
.............never caught anything.

~Cruise I
 
notfred
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Re: Mouse performance question

Thu Jan 31, 2013 8:34 am

A mapped network driver is when you connect to a shared drive across a network. If it goes missing (network gets unplugged without you disconnecting) then it still tries to connect to it and has to wait for the timeout to determine it isn't really there.
 
absurdity
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Re: Mouse performance question

Thu Jan 31, 2013 8:45 am

Assuming this is a home system, do you have any other systems at home you've ever connected to from it? What version of Windows are you using? When the right-click menu does come up, do any of the options seem like something that you wouldn't be able to do?
 
just brew it!
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Re: Mouse performance question

Thu Jan 31, 2013 11:00 am

I'd say it is likely one of two things:

A) A network (or other) storage device that Windows is expecting to see, but which isn't connected/accessible.

-or-

B) A mis-behaving shell extension. Did you install any new software around the time this problem started?

Could also be a failing hard drive; you may want to check the system event log for disk errors.
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
 
UberGerbil
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Re: Mouse performance question

Thu Jan 31, 2013 3:39 pm

Yes, this isn't a mouse performance issue at all -- you can verify that by using the context-menu button found on most keyboards -- and it's only happening in Windows Explorer, so you're dealing with a software issue.

JBI and the others are correct -- past occurrences of this have generally been tracked to either a mapped drive that is no longer available or a bad shell extension.

A mapped drive is one somewhere on your network that you connect to either via \\server\sharename or via some drive letter (typically X: or Y: or something else low in alphabet to distinguish it from the local drives in your system). You can do this through the command line (including logon scripts) but the typical method is through an item on the Tools menu in Explorer that leads to this dialog. These mapped drives can be temporary (lasting only until your next reboot) or "permanent" (in the sense that Windows tries to reconnect to them at your next login). If you have a "permanent" mapping and it is unavailable for whatever reason (or it was temporary in your current session but has gone away, because the other computer got turned off for example), Explorer can get bogged down trying to reconnect to it. This is particularly a problem with the right-mouse-click context menus because 3rd party tools can add their own entries to that menu, and those entries can run code, and that code can be badly-written -- and some of that code runs even before the menu is displayed, because Explorer has to ask each tool whether its entry (or entries) should be enabled or disabled on the menu for the currently selected file.

Which leads to those context menu entries, and whatever programs are associated with them, which can have all sorts of problems including but not limited to the kind of unresponsiveness you're seeing. That link points you to one NirSoft utility for diagnosing and fixing general shell extension problems, but in this case I'd point you to a different one that focuses exclusively on the shell context menu. Unless you recall installing something immediately before this started, you may have a bit of trial and error finding the misbehaving item -- but a good start is turning off everything you don't use and won't miss.

There are a lot of bad shell extensions out there. Generally speaking whenever I install a new piece of software I always choose the "custom install" option if it's available and think very long and hard about enabling any context menu or other shell extension it wants to install (and usually I choose against it -- there very few operations I perform frequently enough directly from Explorer that I want a context menu item for them, and given how crappy so many of them are a little inconvenience of not having the choice on the context menu is outweighed by not having to deal with problems like this.)
 
CaptainCruise
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Re: Mouse performance question

Sun Mar 03, 2013 11:16 pm

absurdity wrote:
Assuming this is a home system, do you have any other systems at home you've ever connected to from it? What version of Windows are you using? When the right-click menu does come up, do any of the options seem like something that you wouldn't be able to do?



Yes, this is a home system but the only one on this network. My mom has her laptop on a router that I set up for her. My connection is hard line to a cable modem. The two don't mix.

My OS is WIN 7 Home Premium w/SP1.

I don't think any of the options are things that are not able to be done. Maybe one or two are greyed out if they're not an option at that time.

I tried the first shell option so far to look for something that stood out as a possible conflict. So far, I haven't found anything. Still having the problem.

Thanks....
T
Last edited by CaptainCruise on Mon Mar 04, 2013 4:58 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Whoever said "A bad day of fishing is better than a good day at work"..........
.............never caught anything.

~Cruise I
 
Arclight
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Re: Mouse performance question

Mon Mar 04, 2013 1:13 am

Would you consider nuking it from orbit? It's just silly that you haven't found yet a solution since january, so the chances of finding the cause now is pretty slim.
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Disclaimer: All answers and suggestions are provided by an enthusiastic amateur and are therefore without warranty either explicit or implicit. Basically you use my suggestions at your own risk.
 
charlesDean
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Re: Mouse performance question

Mon Mar 04, 2013 3:40 am

Hello friends,
here I am describing some step to increase hte performance of mouse-
1. go to run
2. type "regedit" and enter
3. HKEY_CURRENT_USER
4. control panel
5. desktop (select)
6. search "menushowdelay" and right click
7.double click on it and put 0 instead of 400

I hope it will helpful for you.
 
CaptainCruise
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Re: Mouse performance question

Mon Mar 04, 2013 4:57 pm

Arclight wrote:
Would you consider nuking it from orbit? It's just silly that you haven't found yet a solution since january, so the chances of finding the cause now is pretty slim.



I considered it not an option. :wink:

I haven't found the problem yet because I don't spend hours every day trying to. I have too many things going on and don't have
that kind of time to sit and mess with this thing. Would if I could, but I can't.

I'm confident that sooner or later I will find out what's wrong, especially with the help and advice I've been getting here on the forums.

Thanks...
Tom
Whoever said "A bad day of fishing is better than a good day at work"..........
.............never caught anything.

~Cruise I
 
Captain Ned
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Re: Mouse performance question

Mon Mar 04, 2013 5:11 pm

CaptainCruise wrote:
I'm confident that sooner or later I will find out what's wrong, especially with the help and advice I've been getting here on the forums.

We do what we can, but all of us who've done this since this place came on-line (or well before) realize that there are occasions when nuke the site from orbit is the only solution. It goes hand-in-hand with us old farts always talking about backup.
What we have today is way too much pluribus and not enough unum.

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