Shortcut hotkeys cause Explorer to stall

[Kippesoep]

Hi,

I've assigned hotkeys to several (5, to be exact) shortcuts in my Start
menu. These work, allowing me to start certain programs quickly. There is a
problem, though (why else would I be posting here?). Whenever I press the
appropriate key combination, Windows Explorer stalls for anywhere between a
second and a few minutes before carrying out my command. I'll press
Ctrl-Alt-D to open Borland Delphi, for instance, and the task bar will stop
responding for a full minute. Then, Delphi starts up. If I open Delphi by
selecting the shortcut another way (keyboard or mouse), it starts up
immediately. All other tasks do not stall, just the Explorer instance that
handles the taskbar. Task manager shows system to be 94% idle during the
stall (explorer.exe uses less than 1%).

Does anybody know what could cause this, and more importantly: how to fix
it?

Steven

 

[Mark L. Ferguson]

Have you tried assigning another combo, like ctrl-shift-D ?

 

[Kippesoep]

Yep. The odd thing is, the response time grows with system uptime. When I
first boot up, hotkeys respond instantly. When it's been running for an hour
or so, it can take 10 seconds. At the end of my work day, it can take 5
minutes.
I'm about to write my own hotkey-activated program launcher just to get rid
of this annoyance...

Regards,
Steven Don