Strange Browser Problem

[missachickabee]

I'm having a weird problem I've never heard of before, which yields too many unrelated results in a search engine, so I'm hoping someone here has an idea what it could be.

You know how every application has a browser function under "File">"Open"> which lets you browse to a directory, folder, or file?

In P2P programs, you get one of these when you select your shares.

Anyway, no matter which program I am using, when I click the down-arrow to show all the drive letters, it takes like three minutes before it drops down. If I try to close it with alt/control/delete>task manager, it won't close because it says it's being de-bugged. I just have to wait.
Once the drive list drops down, I can click it as often as I want and it works immediately, in that application. If I close the ap and try again, I have to wait again, and if I try it in another ap running simultaneously, I have to wait three minutes, even if it's working normally in a different ap.

Whew! Don't know how clear that is - you can see how hard it is to do a web-search to solve this one, as "application browser hangs" yields
"No Web pages found that match your query." when I put quotes around it, and "1 - 100 of 68,960 Results for application browser hangs" when I don't put quotes around it. None of the first 100 results address the issue I refer to.

Anyone have any ideas besides re-installing Windows (2000)?

[TheParanoidOne]

Do you get the freeze when you right click on an file?

[missachickabee]

No, it has nothing to do with files. I should add to clarify that it does not affect Windows Explorer OR Internet Explorer browsing. Only on the
drop-down that lets you pick which drive you want to begin your search from. That's when it freezes. Once it unfreezes, it stays unfrozen for that particular browse. I think it might be called "walking the tree" but I'm not 100% on that nomenclature. Passed the MCSE 70-210 exam, and nothing about or remotely like this was covered. I'm really stumped.

[TheNOP]

depending on your OS fat, restart the OS, scandisk and defrag.
one of those 3 things should help a little.
i usualy see this problem on puter that as been running for a long time or had a lots of files deletions durings the session.
this behavior worsen with IE5 and up if i remember.

[Sedulus]

smb (mounted) network drives stalling?

the same lookup that occurs when you try to browse on \\somebox\shareddrive and somebox happens to be offline or has it's ports 'stealthed'?
even try the context menu for mapped smb drives that are offline.. that really shows how *&$$#% some things are implemented. (or microsoft had Gbit lines in their minds, with computers that never exhibit connection problems)

or the smb servers list lookup (browsing a 'workgroup') being slow?


my WinRAR exhibits the same stalling behaviour on startup, if network mapped drives are offline.

[missachickabee]

I have a small network with a hub connecting four machines.
I disconnected all my mapped drives and the hanging problem disappeared. It still hangs for a second or two, but that sure beats three to four minutes.

Thanks.