Conference noted::windows95

2935.0. "System pauses, timeouts, Explorer problem" by OSEC::oloras2.olo.dec.com::GILBERT (Oh.) Sun May 25 1997 19:53

Here's an experience I'd like to share, in case it saves others some 
time. (Apologies if it has already been covered, I did my best to check 
first!)

My laptop system began to behave strangely. The symptoms were that it 
would periodically hang for around 45 seconds and then continue as 
normal. Usually (but not always) an hourglass pointer was displayed 
whilst the cursor was over the desktop wallpaper. System Monitor showed 
the cpu 100% active, and Wintop identified Explorer as the culprit. The 
most repeatable ways to trigger the problem were:

1) Left-click the Start button

2) Right-click a file or short-cut in the Explorer window.

After several hours of checking everything I could think of, I suddenly 
realised that the problem was only present when the laptop was 
disconnected from the DIGITAL network. Eventually I tracked it down to 
Start menu entries that were shortcuts to data files on servers on the 
DIGITAL network. It appears that Explorer was trying to access these, 
even though I hadn't selected them, and the delay was due to these 
attempts timing out.

So, the answer was to replace these menu entries with desktop icons, 
and the problem went away.

Brian