Very slow File Open/Save Dialog

I experience a very slow File Dialog mainly within Microsoft Applications. If
I want to open or save a file in Excel, Word, and PowerPoint in a different
directory than the current one it takes up to 1 minute to switch directories.
(Same if I try to save attachments out of Outlook)
This happens with both, local drives as well as network drives. I experience
this on my two XP SP2 machines, both pretty new installed (<1month and
<6month). I run defragmentation on a regular basis.

I'm also running a W2K machine as well with Office 2000 and there I don't
have this experience at all.

All machines are running Norton Antivirus but even if I turn it off, no
change in behavior.

If I open a Windows File Explorer or a Command prompt I can switch between
directories without any delays, regardless if local or remote access is
involved.

I was reading in other posts about the magical 70-100 files/directories per
folder rule. I checked this and so far this does not apply to me. I have less
than that.

Any Idea?

Open My Computer and right click on and select disconnect for any drives
that are unavailable.

I have the same problems as Ollie, but when I open My Computer and do right
click on the screen, there is no select disconnect for any drives that are
unavailable. I tried searching in help with the word "disconnect" and was
not able to come up with any similar resolution. My slow file, open seemed
to happen after I updated .net 2.0. Any other suggestions for speeding up
the "file, open" dialogues? Thank you.

Do you have drive that are identified as unavailable? If so, you right
click on the drive, not "on the screen".

Then the inaccessible mapped drives time-out is not causing your
problem. You may wish to start your own thread about your problem, and
be sure to list what you have (versions of office) and what you have
checked and any other pertinent info like error messages and the like.
That way others may see it and may have an answer.

[madcarrot2007]

Sorry for delay in responding. No there's no drives identified as unavailable.

Has anyone resolved CalifornianEskimo's issue yet? Has he started up a new thread I would like to follow up. I have the exact same problem, no unavailable mapped drives, this has been bugging me at least a year and i have no solution to this. For your info, I have VPN in my computer to access to my pc at work, does this cause the slow delay?

[dbuzzell]

I've done a lot of research on this item to no avail. However, if I reformat the hard drive, reinstall everything (including patches)the problem goes away for 6+ months only to return. I've only encountered this on XP systems.

I've uninstalled patch KB908531, disconnected unmapped drives and basically tried every other solution I've seen posted regarding slow access to Open or Insert file.

This problem is most notable when selected the drop down 'Look In' for navigating to a file to attach to an email via Outlook, but also occurs in Word, Excel etc. when navigating away from 'My Documents'.

So short of reformatting the hard drive I haven't found a perfect solution yet.

Any other suggestions?

[matejliszka]

Hello

A workaround is: type the path to the desired folder in "File name" field instead of clicking on combo box on the top, it is much faster

Possible reason of slow response is that the combo box probably tries to load some subdirectories of the mapped disks. For some reason, it is not optimized and therefore terribly slow. I believe that it is a bug in MS code that could be fixed (if somebody in MS decides to do it at all).

[tnickelsen]

I had the same very frustrating problem with XP that I had never experienced with Windows 2000. I found that I had a link to a computer that was no longer on the network. Your solution worked perfectly.

Many Thanks

[rhbishop2]

I too encountered this problem. It is not firewall or virus protection related. I had set up a home network using a software bridge but the other computer was not present. When I went to Control Panel/Network Connections, removed the bridge and disabled the unused connections the problem vanished.