Super slow Windows Explorer

[HAAK]

I posted something earlier on this subject and I can't
find it now with the search function...strange.

Anyway, I have a problem that started a couple of months
ago and seems to be getting a little worse all the time.
The Windows Explorer function is very, very slow and
hangs for about 45 seconds or so everytime I try to move
through the file hierarchy. For example, if I am in a
Word file and click "save as..." I get to an Explorer-ish
window in which I am searching for the folder to put the
file in. As soon as I click something in this window the
system hangs. Evenutally, it will un-hang and I can look
for the folder. But, if I have to search through a fw
subfolders it will hang agin eventually. The system
never crashes or hangs "forever" but it can take 5
minutes just to save a file.

The machine is a Dell, 2.8GHz, 512MB RAM, plenty of HD
space left.

I have tried to clean up the file system, defrag the
drive, run spybot and adaware, run full AV scan, run all
the diagnostics, etc. Also, XP is fully updated. I
unplugged all USB devices. I did everything I can think
of plus tried recommendations I read about here, but it
still hangs in the same way no matter what I try.

I called Dell and they pointed me to some on-board
diagnostics that I didn't know I had. It took a couple
of hours to go through all of the tests and the system
passed them all. We have 5 other machines that are
identical and none of them have this problem.

Any advice is appreciated! Thank you.

 

[Guest]

This still could be a hardware problem, ram or maybe processor.

 

[HAAK]

Whatis good software that perform these diagnostics?

 

[Guest]

I have noticed that Explorer can screw itself up if you have a network drive mapped that is no longer available. It seems to spend an inordinate amount of time trying to resolve a mapping that does not exist.