How-To

Improve Windows Context Menu Performance

By Austin Krause

Updated August 26, 2021

When you run Windows 7 on a netbook or an older computer, you know the importance of squeezing every inch of performance out of it as possible.

When you run a netbook or an older computer, you know the importance of having squeezing every inch of performance out of what little hardware you have at your disposal. Microsoft has always allowed the context menu to render sub-lists by default, but starting with Windows XP and following with Vista and 7 they only appear if you hover over them. That doesn’t change the fact that they are still being rendered and taking up system resources. If you want a simple change that will slightly improve how fast the context menu pops up, check out the registry fix below!

Improve Windows Context Menu Performance

Step 1

Click the Start and type regedit into the search box and press Enter or click the regedit program link.

Step 2

In Registry Editor, browse to the following key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Explorer

Step 3

Now with the Explorer, key selected, right-click anywhere empty in the right pane and select New > DWORD (32-bit) Value

Name the new DWORD:

DelaySendToMenuBuild

Step 4

Now double-click the newly created DWORD and set the Value data to 1 and click OK.

Done!

Now whenever you right-click an item from the Windows desktop or explorer, the Send To window will not render until you hover the mouse over it. You’ll notice the difference is likely that it used to be a fade-in, and now it draws itself quickly. This should make the context menu a lot faster for computers with limited hardware — such as netbooks.