Old thread -- but perhaps a new problem? I have a user here that JUST encountered this problem starting this week. Opening Word and Excel files from Windows Explorer became very slow, as much as thirty seconds. I did the "standard" things (disabled anti-virus, removed ALL shared network drives and links, removed sites from My Network Places) -- but nothing resolved the problem. There are posts showing a way to resolve the issue by changing the way .doc and .xls files are opened (removing the use of DDE and instead having Windows Explorer open the files directly using Word or Excel) -- but that is really just a band aid over the real problem.
I found another post about someone finding that some OTHER program caused the slowdown for them (unfortunately, I don't remember what that program was) -- but that gave me the clue I needed. I've had multiple problems with Kodak Easyshare over the years, so I tried simply killing the Easyshare process (the one that hangs out in the background to make your life miserable) -- the problem immediately went away.
I uninstalled Easyshare and everything now works fine.
I HATE that software!
I don't know what changed over the last week to cause the problem. We have another almost identical computer with Easyshare installed where we do NOT see the problem. Perhaps it's due to some auto-update the occurred on the one machine over the weekend.