Slow network browsing in Windows XP

There’s a common problem in Windows XP that can make network browsing very slow.

If the 'My Network Places' folder contains a shortcut to a network share, then each refresh of the explorer window will attempt to read icon information from every file in the remote location, causing the system to slow to a crawl.

Removing all shortcuts from 'My Network Places' will return the system response to normal.

Every time you open a file via a UNC name, Windows XP will automatically add another shortcut to the 'My Network Places' folder - so the issue tends to get worse over time.

You can prevent the automatic addition of shortcuts by setting HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer\NoRecentDocsNetHood to 1.

Similar issues affect the Start menu and Desktop - placing a shortcut to a network resource in either location can drastically slow down system response, particularly when the network resource is unavailable. Shortcuts to Domains or Machines don't suffer from these problems as they always have the same icon.

There are two alternative methods of accessing the network that will avoid this performance problem:

Method 1
Create a drive map and use this to browse the network files.

Method 2
Create a shortcut to explorer.exe and pass the UNC name of the resource.
e.g.
explorer /e, \\Server\FileShare

Shortcuts made using the above syntax can be placed on the start menu or desktop, but unfortunately not inside 'My Network Places' of course you can just create a folder called something like 'Simon's Network places' and fill it with links in the above format.

Alternative fixes
Resize the icon cache (Max Cached Icons) on the client.
Increase the Request Size Buffer on the File Server - (try between 32 and 64 Kb) see Q320829 below


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Related:
Q320829 - Modify the Request Size Buffer (SizReqBuf)
Q320138 - Disable Automatic Search for Network Printers and Folders (XP)
Q815227 - Performance Degradation
Q245800 - Delay viewing shares (Windows 98/2000)
Q315237 - High Rate of Collisions on 100-Megabit Networks