Why Windows right-click new is so slow?

Why most Microsoft Windows systems have a slow right-click context menu new option?

For those who don't know what I'm talking about, right-click in any blank space inside a window and choose new option. Then a list of file types available for creation will appear, but on most systems this will cost some processing time, enough to be considered slow in comparison to other right-click operations.

Is this some kind of bad Windows registry implementation, or just some crappy algorithm used in background, any guesses?

Solution 1:

this article could be useful: Right-click is slow or weird behavior caused by context menu handlers http://windowsxp.mvps.org/slowrightclick.htm (the article have two solutions)

Solution 2:

Are any of the items in the context menu have a reference to a network location/resource? I've had items get in there that was pointing to another computer on the network, but that computer could not be reached on the network. Windows is pretty aggressive when it comes to locating/searching for network resources and gives up much later than you would initially think. This happens to me often in our semi-broken roaming profile setup at work.

Solution 3:

The submenu is built up from a list of registry entries. When you have too many options or your registry is too clogged, then it can take while to get constructed. Then the list will be cached, I believe. The construction of the list might be long because it is not just a simple lookup but some references to other registry entries have to be resolved.