Explorer stops responding when trying to access network drive

Hello,

I have recently come across a strange issue.

Let me describe my setup before describing the problem:



- Desktop:

- Dell Dimension 9100 with a freshly installed copy of Vista Ultimate (I
still haven't activated it because I re-installed Vista on a new hard drive,
and I have to talk to an operator to re-activate. I don't know if this makes
a difference with the issue)

- Laptop:

- Dell Inspiron 6400, running Vista ultimate as well.

-NAS:

- Buffalo Linkstation Pro



Now, I used to have Vista installed on the desktop and everything was
working, I could access the network shares on the Linkstation and I could
backup to a shared drive on the Desktop from my laptop. I bought a pair of
hard drives set them up in RAID 0 and installed Vista on the volume. When I
now try to access the Linkstation from the Network folder, explorer stops
responding then restarts. Also, when I try to access a shared folder on the
desktop from the laptop, explorer on the laptop stops responding.

Yet, if I access the Linkstation from the laptop, it works fine, so I
excluded both the laptop and the linkstation from the possible problems.

I had recently installed a gigabit ethernet card and thought this could be
the possible issue, yet when I connected the ethernet cable to my
motherboards ethernet the problem was still there.

I also tried to copy files from the linkstation to my desktop using
robocopy, but in this case robocopy stopped responding. The very strange
thing is there are certain moments when the network actually does respond
properly and I can access the network folders without problems, they last
about 15-20 seconds, and then for another 10-15 minutes explorer keeps
crashing when trying to access any network folder.

I have tried the netsh command with no luck.

Sorry, its a bit lengthy :-)

Thanks in adavance,

Luca