Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.perform_maintain (More info?)

Not sure whether this is a known issue, but I've seen a lot
of unresolved posts regarding it. Recently, file browsing
using Windows Explorer became very slow on my XP machine.
Any of the following caused a 1 minute lock-up:
right-click on a file, Ctrl-C on a file, double-click on a
file. Also, the taskbar would lock up frequently. If I
disconnected from the network, the problem went away.

The cause turned out to be pretty simple. My taskbar
contained a shortcut to an network item, and that item had
been deleted. Deleting the taskbar shortcut fixed the problem.

I can only assume that Windows was frequently trying to
re-establish the bad network link, and that slowed down
file browsing in general.