Explorer Sluggish In Certain Circumstances

Windows Explorer has about a two to five second delay (can work with other programs during delay, but can't open start menu or do other explorer functions) when navigating through folders and doing some context menu functions, such as deleting, cut & pasting, etc.Windows Explorer runs at full speed when creating new folders and files through context menus and while navigating through windows in the mini navigation windows, such as the window that opens when you wish to open a file with a program such as WinAmp.Recent actions before condition was noticed.I was trying to hook up to the net through the hotel's LAN drop with an ethernet cable. I finally get Windows to correctly detect the DNS server and begin surfing and attempting to play Warcraft III online. I play a horribly laggy game and then quit out and reboot my computer.I scan for viruses and find none, though I get a read error about some windows/system/ntos.something or what not. I decide to find some XP performance tweaking tools and found a recommendation for Ashampoo WinOptimizer and XP Smoker. I try both and neither fix the problem, but they cleaned out all my cookies I noticed. I uninstalled Ashampoo, but keep XP Smoker.