Weird problem where all my dropdown boxes are being VERY slow

[DT4K]

Started happening today on my W2k machine at work.
Seems to be affecting all my apps.
In MS Word, I click the save icon, I get the dialog box and when I try to use the "Save In:" dropdown box, it just freezes for 15-20 seconds before it drops down and lists my drives and folders.
In IE, the same thing happens when I try to use the Address dropdown.
I've tried saving files in several other programs (SQL Query Analyzer, Acrobat Reader, etc., etc. and they all do the same thing.

It only seems to happen the first time I use the dropdown after opening the application. After that, it works fine.

Any ideas?

 

[garkon]

hard drives and/or cdroms spinning up probabaly. Usualy i see it when a drive hasent done anything for a while. But if its doing it the first time every time u open up a application(as in, do it in word, u wait for it to spin up, and u immediatly open another app, and it still dose it) i dont know what it would be.

 

[DT4K]

Originally posted by: garkon
hard drives and/or cdroms spinning up probabaly. Usualy i see it when a drive hasent done anything for a while. But if its doing it the first time every time u open up a application(as in, do it in word, u wait for it to spin up, and u immediatly open another app, and it still dose it) i dont know what it would be.

Yep. It's the first time for each application. Even if I just tried in a different app.
It just started happening a couple days ago.