opening Explorer takes forever

[dboy]

Got a Dell (400sc, 2.2 ghz, 1 gig ram, multiple hds, etc). It's always worked like a champ, no problems. Now just today, anytime I open a Explorer window, it takes several minutes to show anything (anything meaning list of drives). It just waves the flashlight back and forth for 3-5 minutes, and then it works ok. If I go into a folder and try to go back up to the "my computer" level, it takes the multiple minutes again.

The only change I've made was installing SP2 - any ideas what's happening here? I installed SP2 on 2 other computers here and neither of them does this. They're all on a network w/ many shared drives.

I checked CPU usage, and it's only at a few percent like I'd expect.

 

[mechBgon]

Did you try a reboot? Are some of the drives listed in My Computer mapped network drives? If so, try unmapping them as a fact-finding step. If Explorer begins running normally with just its physical drives, that would tell you something. Also check Event Viewer for anything in the logs that may help shed some light on this.

 

[dboy]

I cleared my event viewer, removed all network drives, and rebooted. After booting, the only error was "The Windows Image Acquisition (WIA) service hung on starting." Explorer still took forever, so I checked the event viwere again. Now there's an entry that says "The server {A1F4E726-8CF1-11D1-BF92-0060081ED811} did not register with DCOM within the required timeout." According to a regedt check, that is the WIA again. I'm setting that service to disabled and rebooting... back in a minute!

 

[dboy]

With WIA disabled, explorer now comes up instantly like it should. Of course, now my scanner is dead Guess it's time for a new post!