Do you have the option enabled that shows Explorer folders as web pages? You know, with the left-hand column showing stuff?

That's one of the first things that gets killed on my sytems, including any "folder.htt" files on my hard disk. That crap always slows down the opening of web pages.

It could be just that it's trying to read the data associated with the files' tags and trying to display it in the left-hand column or something.