I've notice the following problem and have been searching all morning for a solution. We have a 2008R2 server with ADDS and DNS roles installed. When I remote onto the server it is very responsive and everything seems OK, but when I select START and then Administrative Tools the server hangs for about 10 seconds before the list of Administrative Tools is displayed. Using task manager I can see that the CPU usage goes upto 100% during those 10 seconds with the exporer.exe process taking up most of the CPU. I get a slightly better reponse if I select the Start button, All Programs and then Administraive Tools. But there is still a delay and a CPU spike before the list of tools is displayed. The server is a VM running on ESX4.0 but I am not convinced that is a factor since all other operation looks OK. I spotted this similar thread http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-SG/winservergen/thread/35c30348-598c-4fbd-b8e3-d1d414a09c76?prof=required but no solution was given. Thanks for any assistance

Administrative tools is a "shell folder" When you click the "administrative tools" link in your start menu, Windows will gather info abut the .msc files installed in a few default locations, to display them as links in the start menu. My guess is one or more of the msc files is of a wrong version of simply corrupted, or you do not have the needed privileges. You can find out the locations in registry: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Explorer \ User Shell Folders -and- HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Explorer \ Shell Folders You might also use Sysinternal process explorer and process monitor to find out more on why explorer hangs. For example the open file handles might show you which msc file goes wrong.MCP/MCSA/MCTS/MCITP