Menu Open Delay Solved

[gkarasik]

It took me a while to solve the problem I'm about to describe, and I wanted to post the solution in case someone runs into the same problem. (Although it's pretty obscure.)

First, what this isn't: This isn't a report on a problem with Open-Shell. I never thought it was. All along, I thought it was a problem with one individual PC, a Dell Optiplex 780 Minitower running Win7/Enterprise. I thought the problem was in the PC, but I couldn't figure out what it was. The problem was that after clicking on Start, there was a long delay before the menus would cascade. I have a small home network comprising three Opti 780s and two Thinkpad T61s (all run Win7/Ent). On one of the PCs, there would always be a 30-second delay after clicking on Start. I recognized it as the delay I see when there's a network resource in the menus but the network target isn't available. I tried removing all the submenu shortcuts, and I cleaned up, and even getting rid of, the network shortcuts and drive assignments. I also tried uninstalling and reinstalling Open-Shell, and I imported the config settings from a similarly set up PC that wasn't showing the symptoms. Nothing helped. Then today, I was trying to use a DVD burner I hadn't used in a long time and discovered it had gone bad. I swapped it for a spare, and not only did the DVD-access problem go away, the Open-Shell delay went away. So that's another trouble-shooting step to suggest if anyone reports a menu-open delay.