Menu Delay (WinXP pro)

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When I click on the Start button and point at All Programs, there is a clear 3-5 second delay in popping the menu open. Same thing when I point at the other menu items. The delay is driving me crazy! If I click the mouse on an item, it expands immediately but that’s not good enough. How can I alter the delay? There must be a registry setting?

I have Power Toys and Tweak UI but setting the delay is not a tweak. Thought it would be ?!
And it has nothing to do with memory or processor speeds (1.8 P4 and 640 Ram and weekly defrag)
Thanks…

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Maybe not memory or processor speeds, but the disk is a notorious bottleneck. If you have a lot of items in All Programs, try separating them into smaller groups – such as Utilities, Internet, Communications, Image Editors….and so on. That leaves fewer entries to scan and display, not to mention it looks a lot better.

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Like TweakUI , RegistryRobot is a windows tweaker. It includes the setting for menu delays. It works under XP as well. One significant difference is that it includes the location of the registry setting you are trying to alter ( especially helpful for the curious crowd among us). Here is a link where you could get it. To access the download page you should register with PC Magazine online. This is one of the great freewares they have and a lot more useful stuff inside, once you register.

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Jolas, that’s a nifty little tool. Thanks for the link!!

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Jolas: I installed the robot and it did speed up the menus.

Mark: I only have seven menu choices under All Programs as I like to keep things simple and tidy. I believe my delay problem was caused by a tweaking program that I once used, hated and deleted. (Xteq, I believe) One of the seven menu items I have is the Start Up folder. It’s empty but XP won’t let me move it (hide it) deep inside another sub-menu. Earlier versions of Windows would let you put it where you wanted!

Thanks so much for the advice and help.

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You can reduce the time that the Start menu takes to display its submenus. Go to the HKEY_CURRENT_USERControl PanelDesktop subkey and set the MenuShowDelay value to something less than the default 400. You can set it to zero if you like.

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I am not sure if Registry Robot does just this or to what value if it does, but here is how you can check and/or change in registry to speed up the definite pause when you highlight or click a choice in the start menu:

Open the Registry Editor (start>Run>regedt32>enter) and navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER /Control Panel/Desktop

You should see an entry called MenuShowDelay. The default delay value is 400, but yours may be different as a result of using Registry Robot. The higher the number, the longer the delay. Right-click on it, choose Modify, and change the value to a smaller number. You can change it to 0 if you like, buit if that is too fast you can try a larger number. If you are proficient w/ your mouse/keyboard, 0 is fine.

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