Microsoft confirms XP right click memory hog problem

Yep, thats right. 3 weeks after we posted the original reposted finding on BugTraq and a day before The Inquirer stumbled across it. It's only fair to say that The Inquirer has beaten us to Microsoft's whisper of acknowledgment and a workaround for this bug, which is -yes, no different to the workaround we posted on 26th of April.

While Microsoft have issued no indication of a patch to correct this problem they have put up an article entitled: Temporary Decrease in Performance Occurs When You Right-Click a File or Folder in Windows Explorer. It appears to have been posted 3 days after our article.

Microsoft says in the note that when you right click a folder using Windows Explorer, the CPU usage flies up to 100% when the shortcut menu is displayed.

That means any file copy operation "may appear to stop responding", "network connection speed may significantly decrease", and streaming operations, like listening to music, can become distorted. I suppose its disappointing to see that a fix is in fact disabling (native) features but we can only hope this is solved in SP2 or a patch. Read more for the workaround.

View: Microsoft Knowledge Base Article - 819101