Girl Geekette

MS KB Article 819101 has more info:
 
In Windows Explorer, when you right-click a file or folder, you may experience any of the following behavior:
Any file copy operation that is occurring at that time may appear to stop responding.
Network connection speed may significantly decrease.
All streaming input/output operations such as listening to music on Windows Media Player may become distorted.
When you right-click a file or folder in Windows Explorer, the CPU usage goes to 100 percent while the shortcut menu is displayed. It returns to the correct level when the shortcut menu is closed.
To work around this behavior, use either of the following methods:

Method 1

Turn off the transition effects for menus and ToolTips.
To do this, follow these steps:
To turn off the transition effects in Windows XP do the following:
Click Start, and then click Control Panel.
In Control Panel, double-click Display.
In the Display Properties dialog box, click the Appearance tab.
On the Appearance tab, click Effects.
In the Effects dialog box, click to clear the Use the following transition effect for menus and tool tips check box, and then click OK two times.

Starting Windows XP in Safe Mode
If your computer is off, switch it on to boot up.
If your computer is on, close all open programs. Go to Start and select Shutdown, click on Restart and OK.
While the screen is black with white writing press the F8 key.
Use the arrow keys to move to and highlight Safe Mode, and then press Enter. Allow the machine to finish booting.

Notes About Starting Windows XP in Safe Mode
In Safe Mode, as with other Operating Systems, only basic files and drivers will be loaded, such as, mouse, monitor, keyboard, mass storage, base video, default system services. Safe Mode helps you diagnose problems. If the problem that brought you to this point is not manifest when you start Safe Mode, then you can be sure that the default settings and device drivers that were loaded to create the Safe Mode, are not responsible. Equally, if a newly installed device or driver is causing the problem, you can use Safe Mode to uninstall it or reverse the change.

There a fifth setting in Internet Explorer 6 called my computer which is disabled by default.

If you want to enable this, Open registry by going to START-RUN and entering regedit and then navigate to

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER Windows0] and look for the data value called "flags".

Its default value is 33 ("Flags"=dword: 0X00000021 ) .

Change its value 1 and reboot.

Now you should see an option called my computer in Internet Explorer 6 Zone settings.

Windows 9x and ME users:

A) Use Regedit.exe to navigate to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESystemCurrentControlSetServicesWinsock. 
B) Export the Winsock key to a Winsock.reg file, to save it. 
C) Delete the Winsock key. 
D) Navigate to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESystemCurrentControlSetServicesWinsock2.
E) Export the Winsock2 key to a Winsock2.reg file, to save it.
F) Delete the Winsock2 key.
G) Exit Regedit.exe.
H) Control Panel / Network and Dial-up Connections.
I) Right-click Local Area Connection and press Properties.
J) Select Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) and press Uninstall.
K) After uninstalling TCP/IP, shutdown and restart your computer.
L) If TCP/IP is NOT automatically re-installed, use Control Panel / Network and Dial-up Connections.
M) Right-click Local Area Connection and press Properties.
N) Press Install.
O) Press Protocol / Add.
P) Select Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) under Network Protocol, possibly under Microsoft, and press OK.
Q) After the TCP/IP install, power off and power on your external modem, or shutdown and restart your computer.