After installing SP2, deleting files from the Explorer context menu no longer works. Right-clicking on a file in Explorer and choosing Delete causes a crash.

We were unable to reproduce this on any of the test PCs in our labs. However, this has been reported by many users, so we’re going to recommend a suggestion that has been made in several web forums.

The problem seems to be caused by the new DEP module, a measure introduced to protect against buffer overruns. To turn DEP off completely you’ll have to alter the C:\boot.ini file. Right-click on the file and choose Properties, then turn off the read-only attribute. You can then open the file with an editor such as Notepad. Find the entry which begins with multi(0)disk(0).

At the end of this entry there is the /fastdetect option, and for SP2 installations there is also /noexecute for the DEP feature. If you change /noexecute to /execute, then code will continue to be executable in data storage areas and DEP will no longer be active. After doing this, you should be able to delete files from the context menu again.