Why does photoshop (cs5) 'hang/stall' when saving as jpeg?

Question

i've been noticing that the program has seemed to run slower than it was a few months ago - taking longer to load up, buttons being unresponsive for a few seconds, etc.  recently i noticed if i'm saving my psd file as a jpeg it will 'hang' for several seconds with the "ok" button greyed out.  after several seconds it will turn blue but when i click it, it acts unresponsive but after a few more seconds it saves the document.  but there's no click animation or whatever you might call it.
like i said it just recently started running generally slower.. laggier. 
if anyone has any clues or advice, it would be much appreciated.
some specs - intel core i3/ 3.06GHz/ 4MB/ ATI Radeon HD 4670

Answer 1

While you're interacting with the Save As dialog, you're really working with Windows Explorer, rather than with Photoshop.  The dialog is part of the OS.
I suggest that you must have installed a Shell Extension that's somehow causing stalls or failures behind the scenes.
A great freeware program you can use to both enumerate and ultimately disable Shell Extensions you don't want running is the Shell Extensions Manager by Nir Sofer:
http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/shexview.html
An effective strategy, if a bit time consuming, is to disable non-Microsoft plug-ins one at a time, followed by a logout and login, then test.  Once you've disabled the one that's causing the problem you should see your Explorer dialogs speed up.
Good luck.
-Noel