Are file-open dialogs sluggish on your system? When you try to attach a file to an email, does your system take forever to allow you to choose the source location? Here’s one reason it may be happening.Every time you open windows explorer, it trys to enumerate all of your hard disks, and floppy drives. Another thing it does is try to connect and list the contents of your network mapped drives. If you have a slow network, a wireless network, or sluggish network locations, it will cause your windows explorer (and file-open dialogs) to be unresponsive for several seconds to a minute.

Most of the time, if you have another computer that a drive is mapped to, it won’t cause explorer to slow down. Most times, the problem is caused by an unusual source, a networked inkjet printer. Some inkjet printers have card slots that allow you to print pictures directly from memory cards. If it is a networked printer, it may share it as a networked drive so you can access it from your other computers. The network access for these drives is very slow and causes windows to pauses while waiting for a response.

If you don’t use that network access, you can simply open My Computer, then click Tools, Disconnect Network Drive. Choose your printer drive connection and click OK.