Ok so right clicking on my desktop kills Windows Explorer. Does it in safe mode too. Can right click in my browsers, on files in my user folder, but not my desktop. I suspect dead RAM but not sure how this would work since I have 8GB. Also running Win7. Tried a few techniques including one involving clearing out some menu options or something from my registry. Help
edit: should also note CPU-Z is only picking up 2 cores and 2 threads for my quad core Core i5 2500K
edit2: it only crashes explorer when I right click empty desktop space
Ok so I've fixed it, so for future reference for anyone having this issue download ShellExView: http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/shexview.html
It's third party handlers that seem to be the most common issue. Mines was some software provided by Asus for my graphics card. Disabling non-Microsoft handlers one by one and then testing seems to be the way to go. Happy troubleshooting!