Why Does My Windows Vista Explorer Send To Menu Hang or Open Slowly?

Have you ever noticed that the Send To context menu can be ridiculously slow to open sometimes? You right-click a file and choose Send To, and then have to wait for about 30 seconds for explorer to respond again. Annoying! so how do we fix it?

The problem is almost always caused because Windows automatically puts items for each removable drive into the Send To menu, but could also be caused by having an excessive amount of unused items in the list. We’ll cover how to get rid of both.

Customize the Send To Folder

Excessive items in your Send To folder can slow things down, so we’ll want to trim down to just what we need. Open up Explorer and then type in the following into the address/location bar:

shell:sendto

You’ll see the contents of the Send To folder, where you can delete anything that shouldn’t be there or you don’t use.

But you’ll notice that your Send To folder still contains shortcuts to each of the removable drives:

 

To remove those, we’ll have to use a registry hack instead.

Hide Drive Letters With Registry Hack

You can remove the drive letters in the Send To menu with a quick registry hack. If you still want to use Send To for a particular drive letter, you can manually create a shortcut to it as explained further down.

Open up regedit.exe through the start menu search or run box, and then browse down to the following key (creating if it doesn’t exist)

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer

Create a new 32-bit DWORD value on the right-hand side with the following values:

• Name: NoDrivesInSendToMenu
• Value: 1

You’ll have to log off and back on for the setting to take effect, but you shouldn’t see drive letters in the Send To menu anymore:

To disable the hack and go back to default, just delete the key and logout again.

Download Registry Hack

Simply extract the file and double-click on DisableSendToDrives.reg to enter the information into the registry. You’ll have to log off and back on for the setting to take effect. There’s also an included EnableSendToDrives.reg to put things back to normal.

Download DisableSendToDrives Registry Hack

Remove CD Burning Item

If you have an entry to send files to a disc using the built-in cd/dvd burning items, you can also remove that using this registry tweak:

Disable Windows Vista’s Built-in CD/DVD Burning Features

Manually Create Drive Shortcuts

If you still want to use the SendTo menu for a particular drive, you can manually create a shortcut. Type shell:sendto into the address bar, and then drag the drive into the window to create a shortcut.

You could also create shortcuts to particular folders as well… just remember to right-click drag folders to create shortcuts instead of moving the actual directory.

Note: You could also add Move To / Copy To to the Context Menu as an alternate method.