TC hangs when right-clicking empty space

[Machariel]

When I right-click on an empty space outside a foldeer (hold for a second or so), then TC hangs. Why is that?

[Hacker]

Machariel,
A faulty shell extension. Search this forum for "faulty shell extension".

Perhaps it would be worth an idea to put the fix into the wiki. Also, looking at the FAQ on TC's main page - https://www.ghisler.com/efaqprob.htm - it refers to problems with TC 4.50, which is now more than 20 years old.

HTH
Roman

[Machariel]

I have it with the latest TC as well. I downloaded it to try it out about a few moments ago.
Edit: after a fresh install of Win 10.

[Horst.Epp]

There is no context menu in empty space from TC.
The whole menu comes from the OS or any installed programs.

[Machariel]

There is no context menu in empty space from TC.
The whole menu comes from the OS or any installed programs.

Not entirely true. Context menu on empty space includes making a new folder for example.

[sqa_wizard]

I agree with Hacker.
here are a lots of threads blaming TC for failures at right mouse click, but all of them resulted finally in a faulty shell extension.
Most of them are running fine with Windows Explorer only, but failed with other applications.

Just read the steps at this thread and find the culprit yourself !
Do not hesitate to report it to the author of the shell extension.

[Machariel]

Just read the steps at this thread and find the culprit yourself !
Do not hesitate to report it to the author of the shell extension.

The thread you referred to solved it for me: it was the Alcohol 120 shell extension class. It responds when right-clicking on ISO-compatible files such as MDF, MDS, AlcoholImage and Drive file. So I can't disable it as it's relevant to me. But per your advise I'll inform the software producer. Maybe they are interested.

Thank you all for the responses!

[sqa_wizard]

There is a small chance to play a trick to Alcohol 120 shell extension.
Just copy your TC executable (TOTALCMD.EXE or TOTALCMD64.EXE) to exactly "explorer.exe" lowercase and start it.
Some shell extension are dumb and expect to talk to explorer.exe only.

[Machariel]

According to Alcohol on their forum, after I have notified them, it may be a problem on the TC side...
I also noticed more people have complained about this on their forum. It never was resolved and claiming it's on the TC side. I wouldn't know. Am just an end-user.

@*sqa_wizard
That explorer-trick didn't work.

[tuska]

That explorer-trick didn't work.

Maybe with "Explorer.exe" ... it might be worth a try.
(This is necessary for me to get the context menu entries for Norton 360 in Total Commander).
TC has never stuck here though.

[ghisler(Author)]

The Explorer trick doesn't usually help in these cases - they only help when a shell extension doesn't show up at all because the vendor has limited it to the Explorer.

Hangs/crashes happen when the extension writer makes assumptions that the Extension is called only from Explorer, and doesn't check whether host interfaces are actually available or not. It also can happen when a compiler has turned off floating point exceptions and then executes code which may cause such an exception. But when such a DLL is called from a program which has enabled floating point exceptions, the program will crash or hang.