Have you ever noticed that some applications like Antivirus software, WinZip, SmartFTP, and others, add some items to the context menu when you right-click on a file or folder? Apart from Windows Vista, these software install shell extensions to add applications in the right-click context menu. If you delete the appropriate shell extension in the registry, you won’t get these additional menu items.
A messed up right-click context menu is shown in the screenshot below. I am going to remove SmartFTP from the right-click context menu because I never use it. Read on to find out how to do it.
Note: Make sure you have made a proper backup of your Registry. In case you have mistakenly removed the wrong folder, the backup will come handy in restoring the lost folder.
Remove Item From Right-Click Context Menu Of Files
Note: This method will remove the program from the context menu list when you right-click on some file.
Open Registry Editor to start hacking it.
Windows XP: Go to Start menu, open Run, and type regedit and hit Enter.
Windows Vista: Go to Start menu, type regedit in the Search box and hit Enter.
Once your Registry Editor is open, navigate to,
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shellex\ ContextMenuHandlers
To remove SmartFTP, first make a backup by right-clicking on the SmartFTP folder and selecting Export. Then save the registry at some safe place. Once backup is done, simple delete the folder.
You will see that SmartFTP has vanished from the right-click context menu of every file in your computer.
Remove Item From Right-Click Context Menu Of Folders
Note: This method will remove the program from the context menu list when you right-click on some folder.
Use the same method as above to open Registry Editor.
Once your Registry Editor is open, navigate to,
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shellex\contextmenuhandlers
Delete SmartFTP folder, just like you did in first method.
You will now see that SmartFTP has vanished from the right-click context menu of both files and folders in your computer. It’s that simple!
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15 Comments
Please post that you need to restart after you edit the registry and put the fact that you should not just backup the registry, when editing the registry but that you should do it about every 2 months anyway, at the top of the post instead of at the bottom. Because if someone just looks at the top whole doing the editing and then see’s that message it could mean damage to the computer!
Yeah I agree with you here. Done !
Check back for more useful tips
Good tip! but it didn’t work for folders, i followed the steps but the items are still there!
any idea?
Well, i solved it, the keys were in HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Folder\shellex\contextmenuhandlers too
thx
Glad to hear that you solved it!
Not All Registry entires are there. Actually the vast majority of the right click menu is not in the registry (neither in the files or in the folders). Can anyone explan or help?
Thank you
can neone tell me how to add a new item to in right click menu of windows xp
The items that i wanted to remove was not listed!!! What do i do now? Please help me
I found another context menu handler that is rather important to cleaning things up in windows 7.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Directory\Background\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers
This seems to contain most of what was in the previous locations. More details at my blog.
Hey!! i need to disable “copy” and “paste” keys from folder and file right click menu? can you tell a way to do tht?
This tool will help, http://www.addictivetips.com/windows-tips/disable-file-delete-copy-paste-move-cut-rename-and-other-options/
OK fine but my problem is …Removing items on the RIGHt click on the START MENU
not files, not folders, etc but when I RIGHT click on the START MENU, lots of junk somehow got in there
ya i know i did not pay attention when I install those software
thanks
Hi! Mine was in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Directory\Background\shell and not in shellres
It was a program called CabViaActivesync which isn’t worked for me.
This is quite intuitive. I’ve been looking for such solutions because my folder context menu is over 20+ entries long! Thanks for the insights!
There are two free utilities, put out by the same publisher, which allow you to disable almost any context-menu item including those for folders and files without registry editing. They also have a search capability which makes it easy to find the item among the extensive lists they show. They’re called ShellExView and ShellMenuView. Here is the link:
http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/shexview.html
Both are portable apps so there is no installation. Try ShellExView first and if it doesn’t show something, you can probably find it with ShellMenuView. I just used both to clean out the right click menus for both folders and files on my Windows XP netbook and they did an excellent job. It’s so much faster and safer than registry editing.
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