It takes several seconds to open a menu when right clicking on any item anywhere on my computer. Up until recently I had assumed that it was just a result of waiting on the mechanical hard drive to spin up, but today I noticed it with a USB hard drive and USB stick.
Does anyone know how I might track down what would be causing the problem?
NR 1
Clear unnecessary icons from programs such as 7-zip or vlc etc from the right click menu and see if problem persist.
NR 2
Rightclick on "computer" and go to properties, advance system settings and advanced, then click on performance and set it to "adjust for best performance" this will disable unnecessary visual features. If you prefer mark the "animations in the task-bar, show shadows under mouse pointer, show shadows under windows, smooth edges of screen fonts and last use visual styles on windows and buttons. This is if you think the performance option looks to bad and plain.
NR 3 if you got time.
Generally i would say to optimize your windows 7 to get faster and be more directed towards performance, that is if you are a gamer or using heavy software or just browsing the internet and not using it on work etc. This solves almost all issues with having slow moments when doing just about anything in windows. There's a You-tube video (yea i know but some, just some are really great and a lot of work and knowledge is put in to it by experienced people) that i would recommend watching and follow, instead of watching long guides, its 1h20 minutes but he also explains what he does and why, so you have the information you need to decide what settings you benefit to change.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LwIfcW0EnY&list=PLF0VTmk6ECmQFx8sazMJCpLHSoTx5blry&index=11Last but not least, install Glary Utilities 5 (or cc cleaner) and clean up your computer from junk.
Sorry for being a bit off topic but i just cant stand hearing slow windows issues when it could be made so fast and snappy! =)
Hope this helps and good luck!