After Months, WebDAV Access Freezes

I have a WebDAV server set up using Apache 2 and mod_dav
for Apache, on Linux. The environment accessing the server
is mixed between OS X and Windows XP Professional. My
questions obviously concern the latter half of the
environment .

I first observed the behavior in one workstation, and
figured it was some random fluke, but it has since appeared
in at least two others, leading me to believe it is an
underlying bug.

The workstations are set up to have the WebDAV server as a
"network place," (Network Places -> Add Network Place ->
http://dav.ourserver.com -> User/pass -> OK. That access
works fine for a few months. (Apparently) randomly, one
day, when the user tries to access the network place,
svchost.exe (I believe that's the process, but it's been a
month since I last dealt with the issue) spikes to 100% CPU
usage for ever (I've waited 20 minutes with no change, so
that's close enough to for ever for my standards). Deleting
the network place and re-adding it does not solve the
problem. I am able to "fix" the problem by creating a new
user account in XP, and then logging in as that user, and
setting up a new network place in there (suggesting to me
that it's a user profile setting that gets messed up
somewhere, rather than a system-wide setting).

This does accomplish the necessary task of getting the
computer access to the server, but it's annoying to have to
transfer other settings and definitely should not be
necessary. If anyone can suggest a solution or at least a
place to start looking for file/setting inconsistencies
between functional and non-functional accounts, that'd be
fantastic. If Microsoft would just fix the problem, that
would probably be even better .