Enable or Disable Right-Click Context Menus in Windows Explorer
Have you ever had the context menus in Windows Explorer just completely disappear? There’s a simple registry hack that can turn the context menus off, which means you could also reverse that hack to re-enable the context menus.
This hack probably isn’t very useful for most people, but we like to explain all the hidden features, including the boring ones.
Manual Registry Hack
Open up regedit.exe through the start menu search or run box, and then browse down to the following key (create the key if it does not exist)
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer
Create a new 32-bit DWORD value on the right-hand side named NoViewContextMenu with one of these values:
- Enable Context Menus: 0
- Disable Context Menus: 1
The change should be instant, whether enabling or disabling the context menus.
Note that this setting could also be set under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE as well, so you should check both places if this doesn’t work.

Daily Email Updates
You can get our how-to articles in your inbox each day for free. Just enter your name and email below:


It doesn’t work can u send me the regedit.exe file just export it then email it to me. Thanks
My 11 year old nephew was playing on my pc and now I have no right click on my mouse. How can I re-enable it?
I can find this link down to Explorer HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer
start from policies, i can see policies is not there at all.
my computer Vista Home premium
any ideas why it’s not der.
i was wondering if someone could tell me how to take that information and it make a .reg file myself?