I agree, 7Zip is a useful tool and perhaps it was not the best example to use

But there are many programmes that install stuff without asking or still do it even when you've said no; Corel Panit Shop Pro Photo XI for example.

Not seen Nirsoft's launcher yet. Will have a little 'fiddle' with that today before the footie comes on

Edit
Just had a look at Nirsoft. I misunderstood your post; I thought it was ready but I see it's still in development, but it does look as if it will be a useful tool.

Edited by deleted (Sun 22-Nov-09 08:32:46)

Thanks all for the tips. I'm going to try Ken's suggestion first as I had this crashing before I installed anything that added things to the context menu. In fact, it was a clean install with only Firefox installed. (Sorry, I didn't mention that in the OP as I didn't believe a browser could possibly affect it.) Also, on my old install all my other tools that do add to the context menu were working fine for quite some time and Firefox seems to be the main change when all of this started happening.

I'll post back in a week or so if this cures it, or sooner if it does not.

John.

Just to let you know what I did in the end was to install Firefox 3.6 beta. The problem has not recurred, so I believe there is something about Firefox 3.5.5 that Windows 7 doesn't like.

Alas my online banking (NatWest) won't allow me to use it! Hope they release soon.

John.

In reply to a post by Sark:

Just to let you know what I did in the end was to install Firefox 3.6 beta. The problem has not recurred, so I believe there is something about Firefox 3.5.5 that Windows 7 doesn't like.

Alas my online banking (NatWest) won't allow me to use it! Hope they release soon.

John.

Natwest were very slow, had trouble with using 3.5 in beta.(I had to use the IE tab add-on)
Are all your add-ons that you had in 3.5 working in 3.6?

Had considerable problems with this after doing a clean install of Win 7 Ultimate 64 bit and the recommended Intel Win 7 chipset driver for my motherboard. Windows Explorer crashed, hung repeatedly.
A clean install using the Microsoft supplied drivers only, cured this problem

Cant you spoof your user agent to get past it?

Also on a similar note i've had this issue, an update a few weeks back seemed to greatly reduce it. On the note of firefox i've had the issue without firefox being installed, or running.

Cant you spoof your user agent to get past it?

Ah good thinking. I changed 'general.useragent.extra.firefox' to 'Firefox/3.5.5' in about:config and now I can get on to NatWest. Thanks, didn't even think of that.

On the note of firefox i've had the issue without firefox being installed, or running.

Yeah, I don't think it's actually a bug in Firefox but my problems started and ended with Firefox 3.5.5. So I do think whatever the bug is - that version of Firefox was aggravating it in my case.

John.

Are all your add-ons that you had in 3.5 working in 3.6?

I'm not using any add-ons. Well apart from Java, PDF X-Change, Flash and Silverlight. But they all work fine.

John.

Have you updated to FF 3.6RC?
It allows you to use Natwest.