Did the right-click menu of Windows 10 inexplicably disappear when switching to Windows 11? Don't worry: here's how to restore it
The transition from Windows 10 to Windows 11 is already possible (only for those who meet the system requirements), but the operations - as widely communicated by Microsoft - proceed at a slow pace. The idea is to verify that the new operating system doesn't give problems to the PCs of those who upgrade, and to increase the pace only after it has been verified.
The latest version of Windows arrives with profound changes, both aesthetic and functional, including the new default menu when pressing the right mouse button. Some people, however, might want the old menu: if you are one of them, here is a guide to get it back in a few steps. In the following we'll see two methods to disable the default menu in Windows 11 and restore the "classic" right-click menu that we are all used to. Of the two, the first one is intuitively faster and also the easiest, although both are not particularly challenging to implement.
First method: Command Prompt
The first method to restore the right-click menu on Windows 11 involves using the Command Prompt. If you log in with the administrator account, which is usually that of the computer's primary user, you don't even need to start it as an administrator, because it "commands" the permissions available to the user you logged in with at computer startup.
Once you open the Command Prompt, you must copy and paste the following command into it, and then press the Enter key on your keyboard:
reg add "HKCUSoftwareClassesCLSID{86ca1aa0-34aa-4e8b-a509-50c905bae2a2}InprocServer32" /f /ve
If the command is "digested" correctly, the Prompt will respond with The operation completed successfully. At this point you can close the Command Prompt and restart the computer to make the changes effective and get the right-click menu back.
Second method: Registry Editor
The second method to restore the right-click menu on Windows 11 involves the Registry Editor. Compared to the previous one there are a few more steps to do, but it's nothing prohibitive. Launching the Editor is a piece of cake: just type the regedit command into Run and click Ok.
Then you need to locate the CLSID folder within the HKEY_CURRENT_USERERSOFTWARECLASSES path to first create the key {86ca1aa0-34aa-4e8b-a509-50c905bae2a2}, within which you will create a second one named InprocServer32.
In this one just find the entry (Default) and set its value to blank, then click Ok and close the registry editor and finally restart the computer.
How to get back to the default menu of Windows 11
To get back to the default menu of Windows 11 just delete the key {86ca1aa0-34aa-4e8b-a509-50c905bae2a2} or alternatively open the Command Prompt to type the following command line:
reg delete "HKCUSoftwareClassesCLSID{86ca1aa0-34aa-4e8b-a509-50c905bae2a2}" /f
Whichever way you proceed, the end result when you restart your computer will be the same.