Battling unacceptable file-opening latency 1

[SantaMufasa]

I am running XP Professional V.2002 SP2 on a 1.6 GHz IBM T41 Notebook.

A few weeks ago, my machine started exhibiting terrible latency when accessing files from either Windows Explorer or from Shortcuts: clicking on a 1K text file (opening in Notepad) or a 2K Word document (opening in Word) takes +/- 1 minute.

If, however, I go to a command prompt and issue the command

C:> notepad <filename>

...the file opens instantly. Same occurs for Word documents.

To eliminate possible latency causers, I have

1) unmapped all remote drives
2) defragmented my local drives (3 times).
3) run Norton Antivirus
4) run Spybot Search and Destroy
5) TrendMicro's Housecall malware remover (6 times)
6) Confirmed that my CPU consumption is running +/- 3-5%
7) Confirmed that no other disk access/contention is occurring

These are all of the "tricks" that my internal IT guys can come up with, and my file-access latency is still as terrible as ever.

Again, the puzzling part is that command-prompt invocation of file-access applications is absolutely instantaneous, while my accesses from Windows Explorer or from desktop shortcuts is +/- 1 minute.

What other hints/tricks/magic can you suggest to either troubleshoot/diagnose/isolate or resolve this issue?

Mufasa
(aka Dave of Sandy, Utah, USA)
[I provide low-cost, remote Database Administration services: www.dasages.com]

 

[SantaMufasa]

Sorry for the delay in posting the final resolution to this issue: I resorted to backing up my hard drive and re-imaging the machine.

Re-imaging got rid of the disk latency. I know that is a drastic step, but nothing else resolved the problem.

Thanks to all for offering well conceived suggestions.

Mufasa
(aka Dave of Sandy, Utah, USA)
[I provide low-cost, remote Database Administration services: www.dasages.com]